CLIPPER AT AUCKLAND

Evening Star, Issue 23683, 17 September 1940, Page 3

CLIPPER AT AUCKLAND

FIRST PASSENGER FLIGHT SILKEN FLAG GIFT BROUGHT [Per United Press Association.] AUCKLAND. September 16. Completing her first flight from San Francisco with fare-paving passengers, 17 in number, the Pan-American Airways American Clipper arrived at Auckland a little after 6 p.m. to-day after a fine passage from Noumea. Captain K. V. Beer, who had flown the route previously as first officer, was in command. Among the passengers were five who have made a liobby of “ first flights ” on transocean and other air routes. Easily the first of these is Mrs Clara Adams,, of Long Island, New York, who has a remarkable record in air travel. The others are Mr James M‘Vittio, a Chicago industrialist; Mr William Hoch, a Boston business man; and Mr H. L. Stuart, the head ot a large Chicago investment and banking firm. The passengers described the trip as most enjoyable in every way. At the crossing of the international date-line between Canton Island and Noumea, •‘King Neptune, 1 ’ impersonated by Captain Beer, held his court, and everybody had to submit to the usual initiation ceremony, which provided a great deal of fun for all. Earlier the same day the Clipper was passing south-east of Howland Island, and Mrs Adams, as an honorary vice-president of the Women’s International Association of Aeronautics, cast into the sea a large wreath of bronzed magnolia loaves in a tribute to Amelia Putnam Earhart, the American aviatrix who was lost in that part of the Pacific in 1937 with her co-pilot, Fred Noonan.

When the American Clipper leaves Auckland on Wednesday morning for Noumea on the first stage of her flight to San Francisco she will carry a number of passengers apart from some of those who arrived _ to-day and are returning to the United States. Several of these passengers arrived from Sydney by Tasman Empire Airways service at the week-end.

A beautiful silk American flag, about three feet in length, has been brought to New Zealand as a .symbol of international goodwill by Mrs Clara Adams. (Before Mrs Adams left New York, onlv 11 days ago, she was presented with the flag and another for transmission to Australia by the Congress of American Poets, which has been holding its fifth animal congress at the New York World’s Pair. Airs Adams will hand the flag to the mayor (Sir Ernest Davis), but its final destination has yet to be settled.