DOGS BY AIR.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 238, 8 October 1935, Page 8

DOGS BY AIR.

"PERSONAL LUGGAGE."

LANDED WITHOUT LICENSE

LONDON, August 22

Imperial Airways, Ltd., were fined £2 at Croydon Police Court for allowing the landing at Croydon Airport of two dogs without a license of the Ministry of Agriculture.

The dogs, it was stated, belonged to an American traveller from Munich to England, and were in his personal baggage. It was his duty at Munich to have declared live .stock of any kind. The dogs would then have been accepted only as freight and would have been subjected to closer scrutiny than baggage. When the passenger's belongings were transferred at Cologne to an Imperial Airways machine, it was apparently assumed that all the proper formalities had been complied with at Munich.

For the • company, which pleaded guilty to a technical offence, it was explained that inquiry at Munich showed that the officials of the German air company concerned were not aware that dogs were being carried. They would have been difficult to detect, as they were in a basket which, being among other baggage, was at first mistaken by the unloading porter at Croydon for a parcel of laundry. At no stage of the journey was it handled directly by any of the company's employees.

The chairman (Mr. W. G. Storcr) said that the Bench agreed that it was a technical offence.

A summons against the passenger was withdrawn, liis explanation being that before leaving Munich he went to the British Consulate and was told tiiat lie could take the dogs to England without a license.