The Press Women's News and Views SATURDAY, APRIL 29, 1961. The T.E.A.L. Agreement

Press, Volume C, Issue 29500, 29 April 1961, Page 10

The Press Women's News and Views SATURDAY, APRIL 29, 1961. The T.E.A.L. Agreement

•Up to a point, the broad terms on which New Zealand acquires ownership of Tasman Empire Airways, Ltd., are satisfactory. The price is reasonable and the terms on which the Australian partner will be paid out are not onerous. Some detailed arrangements have yet to be made public; they include such vital matters as sharing Tasman traffic between T.E.A.L. and Qantas. T.E.A.L. will be assured of " substantially “ more than half the traffic ” (unofficially the proportion to T.E.A.L. is said to be 60 per cent). This should give T.E.A.L. a firm basis for continuing a paying business and for development Indeed, the Australian support for T.E.A.L (written into a formal agreement for co-operation between the New Zealand and Australian Governments) should lessen what dangers there may be for New Zealand in “ going it “ alone ” in the international aviation field. But while the co-operation and support of Australia will be valuable, the essence of the change is that New Zealand assumes a freedom it did not enjoy while a partner.

How far is this freedom restricted by the agreement which transfers T.E.A.L. to New Zealand? Freedom will give New Zealand opportunities to intensify its aviation interests in the South Pacific—an area in which T.E.AL is already a specialist—and to bid for rights to establish services further afield. Expansion will involve reciprocal arrangements with other countries besides Australia, notably the United States, Britain, and France. But if, as it appears. New Zealand is tied to sharing a Tasman monopoly with

Australia until 1964, obviously New Zealand’s prospects for negotiating traffic arrangements with other countries will be poor. 'Die question of paying off the Electras (clearly at the time a bad buy, and now, even more obviously, a disastrously bad buy) seems bound up with the continuance of a shared Tasman monopoly. If this interpretation of the agreement is correct. New Zealand’s immediate future in the aviation field seems bound to be prejudiced. Without power to negotiate rights on the Tasman route, New Zealand has nothing in the way of reciprocal advantages to offer a United States line, for instance, willing to fly a jet service into New Zealand. Indeed, this reading of the agreement and the comment by the Minister of Civil Aviation (Mr McAlpine) suggest that New Zealand will be denied, unnecessarily, the benefits of the latest and most popular form of air travel for the best part of three years—that is until T.E.A.L. obtains its own jets when Mangere airport is opened, perhaps in 1964. This is surely a disastrous setback to New Zealand’s hopes for the tourist industry—and an unnecessary setback when, at small expense, the Christchurch International Airport could be made serviceable for jets at short notice. Apart from American-owned jets available to fly services here, Qantas already owns jets and T.E.A.L. could lease jets from the British Overseas Airways Corporation. Its bid for freedom in the international aviation field will be of small avail if it means, in practice, that New Zealand is condemned to remain for three, four, or more years in an aviation backwater.