Sees Disadvantages In Airstrip Policy

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31109, 12 July 1966, Page 9

Sees Disadvantages In Airstrip Policy

fFrom Ow Own Reporter)

TIMARU, July 11. If the Civil Aviation Department adhered to its present policy, it would force operators to replace DC3s with unsuitable aircraft, delay the development of the tourist industry until airstrips were sealed, or cause much more public money to be spent on sealing airfields than was justified by the traffic, said the managing-director of Mount Cook Airlines (Mr H. R. Wigley) today.

Mr Wigley, who returned New Zealand at the weekend after visiting America, Britain and Holland and France, said the purpose of his trip was to talk with the travel agencies with which his company was associated, to study all airlines compargble with Mount Cook Airlines, to find why they had •e’ected certain types of aireraft and, to investigate several aircraft which could be considered as DC3 replacements.

Enough has been learned to decide on the varieties we will select to replace our PC3s after further discusB ions with the Civil Aviation Department, and the National Airways Corporation, and when more has been gleaned about their respective polices regarding secondary airline operations,” said Mr Wigley.

Four of the airfields used by his company had been established at its own expense, as had radio communications and all other facilities. As the cost of

sealing the strips and proiding navigational and ancillary facilities at places “ Mount Cook was likely to be beyond the company’s resources, it must discover whether the Civil Aviation Department was prepared to take over the strips and upgrade them, whether it agreed te the company using them as they were with upgrading to less than sealing level, or whether it would do neither, and force Mount Cook Airlines to use smaller and lighter aircraft, which were not suitable for the type of tourist traffic the company carried, Mr Wigley said.

Mr Wigley said he watched Channel Airways fly from Portsmouth airfield—a rough, grass paddock, soft in places and covered in grass, which was slippery and wet most of the day because of rain. He found that pilots were “quite happy about it” Several other airfields in England and Scotland were being used in the same way. “Operators such as Channel Airways have shown that Friendships and Avro 748 s and Heralds are not greatly different from the DC3s and that there is no real reason why they could not be used quite safely from several unsealed strips in New Zealand,” said Mr Wigley.