FINAL SURVEY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 183, 4 August 1936, Page 10

FINAL SURVEY.

PACIFIC AIRWAYS. HONOLULU TO AUCKLAND. EXPERT IN CUTTER ITASCA. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SAN FRANCISCO, July 15. Impatience with the slow but .certain progress in connection with the establishment of the airways between Honolulu and Auckland has been expressed in Western United States, but this has been mainly from a source not conversant with the immense volume of work necessitated in plotting the rQute Tt has just been announced that W » T. Miller, airway expert of the United States Bureau, of Air Commerce, vwl shortly leave Honolulu to make final survey before official authorisation * given of the new mail, express and passenger service. ■ This information was brought to - American mainland by the arrival of Mr. Stanley Kennedy, president of the Inter-island Steam Navigation Company o'f Hawaii, and its subsidiary, lnterisland Airways. Mr. Kennedy, whose company is general traffic agent for Pan-America's trans-Pacific service, arrived in California from Honolulu aboard the Matson liner Lurlme, and he said Honolulu's importance as sea and air crossroads for Pacific trade and travel soon is to be intensified by the new Honolulu-New Zealand segment ot Pan-American Airways system. Mr. Kennedy said Pan-American Airways' survey of its Honolulu-Samoa-New Zealand route is so near completion that Mr. Miller will leave Honolulu at the end of July aboard the coastguard cutter Itasca to make final survey before authorisation is given of the new mail, express and passenger service. He predicted immediate success for both the New Zealand route and for Pan-Ameri-can's already established mail and express route to the Philippines, via Hawaii, over which passenger service will be instituted early next autumn. "Successful operation of these great ventures appears certain to me, said Mr. Kennedy, "because of the record trans-Pacific passenger traffic via Hawaii now being enjoyed. Rush of Business. "Our inter-island services, for example, are taxed to the limit of their four steamers and six aeroplanes to handle the increasing rush of business, and I have just bought our third 16-passenger Sikorsky baby clipper amphibian to take care of the overflow. We are already maintaining daily service between Oahu and five outlying islands, Kauai, Maui, Hawaii, Lanai and Molokai." The "Auckland Star" San Francisco correspondent learned that the PanAmerican will start the trans-Pacific service for passengers early in September next, but already the preliminary work is being undertaken preparatory to ushering in the passenger carrying service* on the big clippers between California and China. One of the clippers recently departing from San Francisco was furnished with a quota of furniture sufficient to furnish 13 rooms, with stewards and other attendants installed. "We are proceeding very carefully with this work of carrying passengers," said a Pan-American official. "We furnished this particular clipper with everything but the actual passengers so that we might make observations. It also afforded the attendants an opportunity of accustoming themselves to their surroundings before actual entry of the passengers on the long trip across the Pacific."