Wants Action On Report

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31085, 14 June 1966, Page 3

Wants Action On Report

(New Zealand Press Association)

WELLINGTON, June 13. Air services would have to lie curtailed unless there was prompt Government acceptance of the airtraffic control report, Mr E- B. Meachen, president of the Air-Traffic Control Association, said today.

Several air-traffic controllers ivould have no option, but to accept overseas offers, and this would leave New Zealand with insufficient controllers to maintain adequate control of aircraft movements. The report was handed to the Minister of Labour (Mr Shand) on Friday, 18 months after the committee had promised it, said Mr Meachen. The air-traffic controllers had confidence in the committee of experts—Mr J. W. P. Watts, a Wellington lawyer, Mr P. Lynskey, general manager of Straits Air Freight Express, Captain J. Register, a former N.A.C. senior captain. Mr Meachen said his executive would meet in Wellington tomorrow and Wednesday to discuss the report. Controllers had been trying to improve their pay and conditions since 1963, long before the British Radley report on air-traffic control or

publication of the 1.L.0. report by Professor Schenkman, he said. Professor Schenkman, an international transport consultant and director of research for the International Transport Institute of New York, had shown considerable interest in the efforts of New Zealand controllers to improve their lot and had requested a complete copy of the submissions. The association had agreed in 1965 to accept the decision of the expert committee, favourable or otherwise. “It only remains for the Government to accept the committee’s recommendations, and the long-standing dispute will be over,” he said. The Prime Minister (Mr Holyoake) said tonight that the report was being “very intensively studied” by the State Services Commission.