TASMAN AIR MAIL.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 213, 9 August 1937, Page 6

TASMAN AIR MAIL.

Now that an agreement has been concluded between the Governments of the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand for the inauguration of the transTasman air mail service, the question most pressing is hoiv soon will it be in operation. An answ'er is provided by the Canberra correspondent of a Sydney journal, who states that the Tasman will be linked with the service from Britain to Australia soon after it commences. Though this is purely unofficial it seems not unlikely that the intention is to join this Dominion with the Britain-Australia route as quickly as possible. The agreement provides for an operating. company to be created and registered in New Zealand to conduct the service, and for contracts for the carriage of mails being granted to it by the respective Governments, each of which will be represented on the company by three directors. Annual payments will be made by each country to the company, and in the first three years the proportion will be , ! 39 per cent, from New Zealand, 38 per cent, from the United Kingdom, and 23 per cent, from Australia. But wdiile New. Zealand pays the largest share she will also receive, as the Prime Minister has pointed out, the largest share in the distribution of revenue. Fuller details of the agreement have yet to be awaited. 'These relate to the official date of commencement of the service, the rate of postage aii from New Zealand Britain is carrying all letters in this way at ltd per half-ounce, and all other Empire countries joining in the scheme have accepted this rate except Australia—and where the terminus of the service will be located in this country. More than two and a-half years have elapsed since the British Government announced its great scheme of cheap Empire air mail, so that its extension to this Dominion is gladly accepted.