AIR TRANSPORT

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 70, Issue 91, 18 July 1944, Page 4

AIR TRANSPORT

WHILE the decision announced last month of the Cunard Steamship Company to take power to establish air services after the war, following similar decisions by several other British shipping companies, indicates the extent to which big transport corporations are making ready for the new era in travel, the many evidences of Government interest, both in the national and international fields, give an assurance that a serious effort will be made to place postwar aviation on a stable world footing. Lord Beaverbrcok has announced that the Empire Air Conference has largely cleare.d the way for international action. Quite recently plans were put forward by the British Chamber of Commerce and the Federation of British Industries for the formulation of Imperial and International policies. Real progress towards an orderly and efficient system of world transport is dependent on the preliminary definition and sanction of the rights that will be accorded to air travel in both the national and international fields. The recommendations of four members of the British House of Commons stress the importance, as an essential preliminary, of an international convention to regulate the conditions of air transport. They recommend that the "right of inno* cent passage" and of emergency landing should be absolute and universal; that the operation of air lines between two points in the same country or between related geographical areas should be a matter of domestic policy; and that the operation of international air lines* should be arranged on a basis of freedom of entry. Britain's problems, and consequently those of the. Dominions, are morecomplicated than those of the smaller nations, since Britain and the Dominions are concerned with the Empire policy as well as with domestic and international policies. An agreed Empire, policy is an essential preliminary to international negotiation, and to this end it has been gested that in addition to policies as common as the circumstances will permit in domestic aviation within the Empire countries, there should be created an Emmje Air Board which would speak for the British' Empire in fie international field.