No Urgency For N.A.C.’s Jet Aircraft

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31360, 4 May 1967, Page 12

No Urgency For N.A.C.’s Jet Aircraft

The Government is expected to announce this week its decision on the jet aircraft which will succeed the Viscounts and Friendships of the National Airways Corporation. N.A.C. has made no secret of its preference for the American Boeing 737. This choice, at this particular time, would in our opinion be very damaging to New Zealand’s interests. The British Aircraft Corporation, with some overt political assistance, and no doubt some more discreet official pressure, has been pressing the claims of the B.A.C. 1-11. The opinion of N.A.C.’s experts must be accepted that this choice would be a “second “best". The only decision which commends itself as unequivocally in the national interest just now is to postpone the conversion to jet aircraft. In the present balance-of-payments crisis any unnecessary or premature expenditure of overseas funds should be avoided. The Government has tightened import controls on new equipment and machinery to such an extent that manufacturers are virtually forced to “ make do ” with their present equipment. Why should N.A.C. be privileged? On balance-of-payments grounds there is an even more compelling reason for postponing the purchase—even the choice—of jet aircraft This is Britain’s renewed bid for membership of the European Economic Community. If the New Zealand Government were to announce today that N.A.C. would buy the Boeing aircraft New Zealand’s “special interests” would be bound to seem less important to the United Kingdom during the coming negotiations with the Common Market countries, although Britain’s obligations to New Zealand are in no way connected with New Zealand’s aircraft purchases. An immediate decision in favour of the British aircraft would certainly earn some good will in Britain; but the value and importance of any such New Zealand gesture would tend to diminish with the passing of the long months of negotiations which are expected before the terms of Britain’s entry to the Common Market are settled. New Zealand might be equally unwise to surrender at this early stage any of the bargaining power it needs to support its claim to a share of the market in the United States for primary produce, which may be severely restricted as a consequence of renewed pressure from the “farm “ lobby ” in Washington.

In the national interest, there is everything to commend a delay in the expensive process of converting N.A.C.’s fleet to jet aircraft. Delay might, as N.A.C.’s general manager (Mr D. A. Patterson), asserts, be expensive. He has calculated the extra cost of maintaining a Viscount fleet until 1975 at £6 million. But reduced access to New Zealand’s markets in the United Kingdom or the United States of America might cost this country in export income far more than £6 million each year—until and beyond 1975. If the nation had to subsidise N.A.C.’s operations for a few years, that might be a small price to pay for the benefits to be won in wider spheres.