CORAL ROUTE SERVICE

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28551, 2 April 1958, Page 14

CORAL ROUTE SERVICE

Discussions In Wellington (From Our Own Reporter) WELLINGTON, April 1. The future of Coral Route air service between Fiji, Western Samoa, the Cook Islands and Tahiti will be one subject tor discussion at the aviation talks between Australia and New Zealand, to be held in Wellington next week. Today, the Minister of Civil Aviation (Mr Mathison) said Tasman Empire Airways would discontinue its flying-boat service early in August, but the airline was making arrangements for a direct land plane service between Nandi and Bora Bora, the Society Islands airfield serving Papeete. Though T.E.A.L. was a joint Australian-New Zealand responsibility, the Coral Route service to Samoa and the Cook Islands had been maintained entirely by a New Zealand Government subsidy to cover the annual losses, he said. The Government was ready to go on doing that, to provide a service for those areas, but after July there would be no available aircraft. The only flying-boat retained by T.E.A.L. for the service had never been an economic proposition, said Mr Mathison, and now the need had arisen for an extensive, and very expensive, major overhaul that would take a considerable time. Obsolete Aids A complicating factor was that the radio communications and navigational aids equipment in the area was mostly obsolescent, and the maintenance spares for it had all been lost in the Gracefield stores fire some weeks ago. "In the circumstances, we have no choice but to agree regretfully to termination of the Coral Route flying-boat service,” said Mr Mathison. Because the life of the flyingboat service was known to be limited, it had been announced in March, last year that surveys would be undertaken to estimate the cost of rehabilitating wartime airfields at Faleolo (Western Samoa) and Rarotonga for a landplane service, said Mr Mathison. "Reports indicate that the development cost, with facilities up to minimum acceptable international standards, would be anything from £500,000 to £750,000. depending upon the degree of permanence of the work done,” he said. Even if work of that magnitude could be afforded now, the two airfields could scarcely be available before 1960. The extent of the work also depended on the type of aircraft chosen to replace T.E.A.L.'s present DC-6’s.