TASMAN AIR SERVICE

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26055, 7 March 1950, Page 4

TASMAN AIR SERVICE

DISCUSSIONS NEXT MAY PROJECTED CONFERENCE IN CANBERRA From Our Own Reporter WELLINGTON, March 6. There is unlikely to be any progress on the air service to the South Island from Australia before May, because the question will not be discussed until the South Pacific Air Transport Council meets in Canberra ■ after Easter. The conference was to have met in Canberra this month, but the meeting has been postponed. When the conference does meet its agenda will include the question of permitting other services to be operated across the Tasman. The problem is not only one of a sendee to the South Island from Melbourne, but also of permitting other airlines to operate across the northern Tasman. At the moment Tasman Empire Airways has a monopoly. Carrying traffic now between Auckland and Sydney, it will shortly begin a service between Wellington and Sydney as well, and will still be the only service operating unless the aviation clause in the Canberra Pact, signed in 1941, is abrogated. That pact conserved to Tasman Empire Airways the sole right to fly traffic across the Tasman between New Zealand and Australia. Even it that clause were declared void, there y/ould still remain the “Five Freedoms of the Air” which were signed at Chicago by all the nations of the world except Soviet Russia and its satellite countries.

' One of these “freedoms” provides that where in any area such as the Tasman, a new service is permitted, any other operator wishing to establish the service must also be allowed in. For New Zealand this opens up wide possibilities, because Canadian Pacific Airways and the British Commonwealth Pacific Airlines have both indicated they wish to fly between Auckland and Sydney, and so also would Pan American Airways. In these circumstances it is extremely doubtful whether Tasman Empire Airways could face the competition, and the New Zealand Government holds 50 per cent, x>f the shares in the company, with Australia holding 30 per cent, and Britain 20 per cent.

If Tasman Empire Airways was forced off the airlanes over the Tasman Sea, the State would be a loser both here and in Australia.

The conference when it assembles in Canberra will discuss all these issues in relation to the granting of the service across the Tasman between Melbourne and Christchurch, but it is considered in official circles in Wellington that the major issues are unlikely to be settled before the normal meeting of the International Council of Air Organisation in Montreal late this year. New Zealand will have delegates at that conference.