TRANS-TASMAN AIRCRAFT.

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25737, 24 February 1949, Page 6

TRANS-TASMAN AIRCRAFT.

EARLY LAUNCHING OF

FIRST SOLENT EXHAUSTIVE TESTS IN BRITAIN (P.A.) AUCKLAND. February 23. The first of the four Solent flyingboats ordered by Tasman Empire Airways. Ltd., for the Auckland-Sydney service to replace the existing Tasman class aircraft, is expected to be launched about the end of next month. Advice received by the company in Auckland from its liaison staff at Belfast suggests that all four of the new aircraft should be ready for delivery about the middle of this year. Exhaustive tests of the first of the new aircraft will be made immediately she is ready for them. Air tests in Britain will come first, and will be followed by a flight to the tropics, possibly to Basra, for trials under tropical conditions. Work on the remaining three aeroplanes will be continued while the first is under test. Although no precise dates of the completion of any of the aircraft have vet been given, Tasman Airways is already preparing to send, the first crew to Britain to accept a Solent. Instead of the crew being sent from New Zealand in one party, the members are being dispatched at different dates, according to the time they will need for conversion courses and other preliminary duties in Britain. The company’s operations manager (Captain K. A. Brownjohn) will leave on March 24: the commander of the crew (Captain C. Griffiths) on March 29; the first officer (Mr F. W. Kilgour) and the radio officer (Mr D. Reid) on April 17; and Mr E. R. Chedwick, the steward, on April 24. The fate of the company’s existing fleet, which is on hire from the British Ministry of Civil Aviation, has not yet been decided. The four Tasman class flying-boats will continue to run until they can be replaced by Solents, and for a short period, both classes of aircraft will be on service until the change-over is completed. However, it is not yet known whether the four present aircraft will be flown back to Britain, delivered to some other part of the world, or left in reserve in Auckland.