The Air Pageant

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 19854, 15 February 1930, Page 14

The Air Pageant

Though nearer to it than any other community in New Zealand, Canterbury people have yet to reach the point when flight will seem as ordinary a means of transport as any by land or sea and they will no more stop to look at an aeroplane than to look at a motor-car. Many of them, no doubt, will find in the pageant at Sockburn to-day chiefly the interest of an exciting novelty; and that interest it certainly has. No city in New Zealand has yet been able to see in one afternoon the evolutions of between thirty and forty aeroplanes, not even Christchurch) which can fairly claim to be the home of the Dominion's aviation. But the real meaning of the display organised by the Aero Club is that aviation is not really novel, cr strange, or experimental, or precarious at all, but a tested, safe, and normal means of getting about the world on business pr pleasure; and to whatever extent it appears to be a startling innovation, to that extent it is proved that as a people we are slow to learn new things and to seize new advantages. There are reasons, some of them more or less sufficient, why New Zealand has been slower to advance in aviation than the rest of the world; there are reasons, too, why it cannot be expected to make such free and systematic use of flight as many other countries. These have near neighbours, for instance, their dealings with whom demand the utmo|t despatch. New Zealand's flying will perhaps for years yet regularly serve only its internal needs. But, to allow for all that, there is still a considerable backwardness which ought to be overcome and is being overcome. To-day's pageant is the most instructive sign of (bat, and also a stimulus of no little value.