New Air Centre

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31498, 12 October 1967, Page 11

New Air Centre

The National Airways Corporation’s new air centre in the Bank of New Zealand building extends the passenger and booking facilities which had grown too great for the previous centre in Gloucester Street.

The new premises, which opened for business on July 3, comprise the entire fifth floor of the building, part of the sixth floor, and a ticket sales office on. the ground flow. It was found that the Gloucester Street premises, which had been occupied for the last 18 years, were inadequate for the expansion of business envisaged in the future. Apart from freight and transport, the move centralises the airline's facilities in Christchurch. The new site has almost double the flow apace of the old premises. The'flfth and sixth floors will bouse NXC.'s communications, administrative and reservations departments, and the tape relay message centre previously located opposite the old centre in Gloucester Street. After the change, considerable alterations to timetables and systems bad to be made. All airway passengers wishing to use the coaches to the airport now report to the Midland depot in Lichfield Street Passengers arriving also disembark, at Lichfield Street Passengers

and their luggage are now checked at the airport instead of at the as in the past The move to this site is regarded as transitional. N.A.C. has long bad plans to build an air centre in Christchurch itself and, accordingly, has bought a site in Armagh Street This it will retain until such time as the airway’s board of management decides to build. In the meantime, NJk.C. has a commodious and cen-

trally sited depot The new ticket sales office is three times the size of the old one and has been attractively designed and constructed. Consideringthe amount of equipment that had to be shifted, the transfer to the new site went surprisingly smoothly. Several tons of equipment had to be moved, including the movement of Christchurch’s largest tape relay centre, which was eventually installed on the sixth floor after an operation lasting four weeks.