First Viscount Passenger Flight Lands At Rongotai

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28951, 20 July 1959, Page 10

First Viscount Passenger Flight Lands At Rongotai

(New Zeaiana Press Association)

WELLINGTON, July 19. Hundreds of sightseers, braving a cold northerly wind, .lined the runway at Wellington airport today in an unofficial but warm welcome to the National Airways Corporation’s Vickers Viscount “City of Christchurch.” Long before the aircraft's scheduled time of arrival, vantage points around the airport were thick with parked cars. Crowds began to form behind police-supervised barriers on the airport itself from about three o’clock and as the minutes ticked by the air of expectancy grew more tense. Just before four o’clock the public address system blared the information that flight 937 from Auckland was due to land in a few minutes. Brief consternation seized the crowd as two girls could be seen strolling across the runway from the side farthest from the terminal building. Shouts of warning were followed by a vehicle driving madly out. The girls increased their pace and disappeared into the crowd. • Sweeping low over the northern hills, the Viscount flew out over Cook Strait as it prepared to approach the runway. Using only a fraction of the mile-long runway, the Viscount gently rolled to a stop, turned and purred into the tarmac, and the first passenger-carrying Viscount had landed on Wellington’s new airport. One of the passengers was the chairman of the Wellington City Council’s airport committee <Cr W. H. Nankervis) who made the flight from Auckland Waiting to welcome him. at the foot of the steps were the chairman of directors of National Airways Corporation (Sir Leonard Isitt) and the manager (Mr J. J Busch) The Attorney-General (Mr

Mason) and Mrs Mason were also passengers. The youngest passenger on the flight was five-months-old Gloria Doidge, whose mother, Mrs J Doidge, of Waterloo, Lower Hutt, travelled to Auckland specially to fly back in the Viscount. An elderly man, who declined to give his name, could speak of nothing but the courteous way he had been treated on the way down. One of the last to step from the Viscount was Miss Kristin Cavaye, who said: “The flight down was simply marvellous.”