POST-WAR AVIATION
Britain and the United States have been investigating the possibilities of air transport services after the war, and, according to Lord Beaverbrook, have reached no inconsiderable measure of agreement. The item of most interest to New Zealand in the lengthy statement made by the British Minister was that neither of the two countries approved of the policy laid down in the Canberra Pact,.viz.. Full control of international air routes and ownership of all aircraft and ancilliary equipment thereon by the international transport authoi ity. Lord Beaverbrook said that Australia and New Zealand had made it clear that they would be prepared to make concessions, but on such a vital matter of principle compromise wotfld hardly be possible. Presumably any "State could decide that it would employ .its own aircraft on overseas routes, but that would fall far short of international ownership. Apparently this section of the pact will have to be revised in the light of decisions of the two great Powers. Reference was made to a Canadian draft plan said to have laid down a detailed scheme for an international regulating authority. This may have been based on the principles agreed upon by President Roosevelt and Mr. Churchill at Quebec, last year, but. apparently it was found to be too rigid, and the findings of an Empire conference held six months ago were taken as a basis for the Anglo-American discussions. Strangely little has been heard of this Dominion Air 1 ransport Conference, as it was styled.. This country was represented by the High Commissioner, and a leading aviation journal said that in fact Canada and India alone were adequately represented, meaning that those two countries had technical as well as political officers present. It added that “after the conference no details were disclosed of the tenor of the talks or the decisions reached.” Lord Beaverbrook has now made the findings public, and it is clear that the advocacy of international ownership, embodied in the Canberra Eact, was made with the knowledge that the London conference had not endorsed that course even for the Empire services. But there is ground for hoping that all these conferences and discussions are preparing the way for a general agreement. . e peoples who have seen the wonderful development of aircraft tor purposes of war are strongly desirous of seeing them turned to the purposes of peace. One authority has said that “there is no mightier expansion of power than that which awaits the art „of flight in its translation from the destructive to the creative phase. People want to see. air services used ’to bring the nations closer together, in more ways than one. It will not be easily achieved. There are, m Lord Beaverbrook’s statement, indications'of developments that, will cause much discussion, sueh as the ruling of Washington that American rights of cabotage will include sole operation of air traffic between the United States and Hawaii. That difficulty has already been encountered in the world of shipping. But with, goodwill and a determination to reach agreement it should be possible to make post-war aviation a factor for better understanding, by harnessing these wonderful developments in the service of all peoples.
Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/DOM19440515.2.17
Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka
Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 194, 15 May 1944, Page 4
Word count
Tapeke kupu
530POST-WAR AVIATION Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 194, 15 May 1944, Page 4
Using this item
Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi
Stuff Ltd is the copyright owner for the Dominion. You can reproduce in-copyright material from this newspaper for non-commercial use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). This newspaper is not available for commercial use without the consent of Stuff Ltd. For advice on reproduction of out-of-copyright material from this newspaper, please refer to the Copyright guide.