Air Navigation Aids

Press, Volume C, Issue 29630, 28 September 1961, Page 14

Air Navigation Aids

Improvement in National Airways Corporation emergency flight planning and passenger information systems, which is certainly not before time, is all very well as far as it goes. Unfortunately the need for these systems is exaggerated by the growing inability of the Civil Aviation Administra tion to provide a full service. N.A.C. would have to make fewer emergency alterations to its timetables and would have less need to advise passengers of these changes if the C.A-A. had enough technicians for its existing flying aids and could find men for new airports and new equipment. The frank admission by the Minister (Mr McAlpine), in Parliament, and by the deputy-director of Civil Aviation (Mr L. F. P. Taylor), at the Harewood meeting, of the crisis in the administration are moat disturbing. Because of the staff shortage Mr McAlpine cannot promise that new airports will be opened

when finished. Mr Taylor says the C.A.A. needs 60 men to service its aids. The offer of the United States Navy to leave ground control approach equipment ai Harewood cannot be taken up because the C.A.A. has no men to maintain and operate the plant. The importance of radar an 1 other navigational devices lies not so much in ensuring passenger safety It can be assumed that if a flight or landing is not considered safe it will not be made. The purpose of the aids is to allow aircraft ic fly safely instead of remaining on the ground in bad weather. Without them a huge investment in aircraft and airports canno, be used efficiently. The economic waste should the new Dunedin airport have to lie idle is an instance. It has been irritating for passengers not to know when a weather - affected flight would leave; but it is much more irritating if the flight cannot leave at ail. Such interruptions will become worse if the C.A.A. remains

short of technicians. While it may train some and bring some from overseas, its chief problem is to retain them in New Zealand’s chronic condition of overfull employment. The import shelter has «ed to a shortage of electronic technicians, who have been attracted to work in television factories. How much more sensible it would have been to import cheaper television sets and use scarce technical ability io better advantage in maintaining air schedules.