THWARTED FLIER.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19177, 7 December 1927, Page 3

THWARTED FLIER.

TRANS-TASMAN AMBITION.

REGULATION PREVENTS DEPARTURE.

(trou oxm own coaaisposroiNT.) SYDNEY, November 25. A regulation which the Commonwealth Government jput into operation immediately after the disasters of the Dole Prize air race from San Francisco to Honolulu has probably been the cause of an Australian airnron failing to fulfil one of his life's ambitions —to fly from Australia to New Zealand.

The pilot is Captain P. H. Moody, one of Australia's best known civilian airmen. For several years he had been a pilot in the service of Australia's premier commercial aviation system, the Queensland and Northern Territory Air Service. He has flown, more than 200,000 miles without a single mishap. Several months ago he resigned his position with the expressed intention of being the first man to span the Tasman by air. Moody and his financial backer went to the United States, and were there shortly after Lindbergh achieved his New York to Paris flight. Moody reasoned that if a Eyan monoplane with a Wright "Whirlwind" engine could carry Lindbergh across the Atlantic, the same combination would more than suffice for the trans-Tasman effort. Moody and his backer saw the machine they had in mind, tested it, and bought it. A 200 horse-power 'plane, it was an improvement on Lindbergh's. It could carry two passengers on a non-stop flight of 2000 miles. With one aboard it could travel almost twice that distance without a stop. Moody, his backer, and the 'plane left for Sydney. In New Zealand they spent four days choosing a suitable landing ground, and a spot near New Plymouth was decided upon. Then the party came to Sydney. . . to learn that daring their absence a regulation had been put into force prohibiting the use of a land machine for journeys further than fifty miles from the mainland of Australia. The Eyan monoplane was a land machine, and hence it ia still lying on a Sydney wharf in the crate in which it ' left America.