U.S. AIR LINE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 181, 2 August 1941, Page 5

U.S. AIR LINE

EXTENSION WANTED SYDNEY TERMINUS URGED There is at present a strong move; on foot in Australia to have the PanAmerican Airways service extended to Sydney. The "Sydney Daily Tele- j graph" states that the Australian I Prime Minister, Mr. Menzies, hadj discussions on the subject when in | America on his way home from Britain, and it is pointed out that an extension to Sydney would save' at least one day in the transport of I airmail between the United States and Australia. Writing in the "Sydney Morning Herald," Mr. Geoffrey Tebbutt says that Australia should not sit back and wait for America to do the ask-1 ing. Australia should make the offer he states, and should make it in the form of a warm invitation Australia needed every contact that it could get with America —cultural, . commercial, political and military.

"We need it quickly, and we may | need it more urgently yet while Japan toys with the idea of southward expansipn that the Minister to Canberra, Mr. Tatsua Kawai, tries with heavy irony to laugh off," says Mr. Tebbutt. "How painfully have Australia's communications suffered in the past because of this same bogey—in which we may suspect that the British Government had a ; hand—about letting the foreigner in! "We have permitted for a year the spectacle of Pan-American Airways sending its clippers over the ocean oniy as far as New Zealand because landing rights were not accorded to them here. Meanwhile, the New Zealand Government, less dilatory, , has tied the company to a fortnight! - : i service to Auckland. ! i "Superficially, what is involved in ' the present question is the delivery a few days earlier each fortnight j (or each month, if we can wring a ! concession from New Zeaianu) of passengers and mails over the transAtlantic and trans-Pacific routes. That is important, but not vital. What is vital is that we should lose no opportunity of bringing America I nearer. It would be a question only of the more plentiful supply of flying boats before we could have the clippers touching down here once a week, and later even, more often, thus restoring also the fast air connection with Britain.