PROGRESS IN COMMERCIAL FLYING

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 146, 16 March 1939, Page 8

PROGRESS IN COMMERCIAL FLYING

A useful extension of New Zealand’s commercial air services was made yesterday when a daily service, linking Wellington with Greymouth, via Nelson and Westport, was inaugurated. The timetable will enable Wellington residents with urgent business to transact or appointments to keep in either of the West Coast centres to leave the capital at 7.35 a.m. and be back in the early afternoon. Such a saving of time, compared with the slow transport of yesteryear, provides a striking example of the efficiency of air travel and the great community service aviation is performing by bringing the cities and larger towns of the Dominion into closer and more personal daily contact. A similar addition to the existing routes will be made on Monday next, when a triweekly service between Auckland and Gisborne, via fauranga and Opotiki, will begin. Here, again, a considerable saving in journey time will be enjoyed by the travelling public, and the East Coast area will be brought within two and a half hours of a main centre.

Apart from their value as a means of improving communications, the commercial air services of the Dominion are pioneering a new transport age. There can be no doubt thqt in the years to come flight will be the normal, everyday mode of long-distance travel. Ihe sooner this is recognized by the people the faster will be the development of aviation, and that development will assist national progress on more general lines. In the meantime the public is being given every encouragement to become air-minded. The services are reliable and attractive, and the record of efficient flying during the years they have been operating compares favourably with that of commercial aviation in overseas countries. In three years the principal company operating in New Zealand has increased its daily air mileage from 500 to 1840, and at the present rate of advancement the time should not be far distant when a complete network will exist’ from Whangarei, or even further north, to Invercargill, or. perhaps, Stewart Island. In the meantime plans for the transtasman service are nearing completion. The establishment of this final link in the Imperial Airways Empire chain will be an event of the greatest practical importance and significance, and the first “pay-load” flight should be made a public occasion. Yesterday's announcement of the appointment of Captain J. W. Burgess as commander of the Aotearoa. one of the two flying-boats built for the service, will have been received with satisfaction. It will be regarded as an appropriate recognition of tins young New Zealander's achievement as commander of the Centaurus, winch carried out an exploratory flight from England to New Zealand at the end of 1937. He and Captain Butler, commander of the flying-boat Australia, will follow the air trails of some of aviation's most famous figures. In their hands will rest responsibility, but also high opportunity; and to them will go the honour of turning a new page in the history of aviation south of the Line.