Brief Antarctic Call By Tourists

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31831, 8 November 1968, Page 1

Brief Antarctic Call By Tourists

The 60 wealthy American tourists who will fly to the Antarctic this month on the SUSIO,OOO-a-seat Byrd memorial flight are not expected to spend more than four hours on the ground at McMurdo Station.

Rear Admiral J. L. Abbot, commander of the United States Navy’s Antarctic Support Force, said yesterday that the party would stay at McMurdo Station only while their Convair 990 jet aircraft refuelled. “Their main event will

probably be a visit to the Byrd statue at McMurdo Station for a mass ceremony, right by the Our Lady of the Snows chapel,” he said. Because the Convair had no skis it would not be able to land at inland stations, but it would fly over the South Pole.

Admiral Abbot said it was quite clear from the language used by the Antarctic Policy Group in approving the visit that the group did not intend it to be “an entering wedge for recurring trips for profit.” The Byrd memorial flight had been approved because it was a once-only flight arranged by a non-profit organisation and because it was quite a significant memorial of

Admiral Byrd’s first Antarctic flight in 1929. The approval meant that he could let the tourists land at McMurdo Station and sell them fuel. If they had a meal at McMurdo Station he could not give it to them—they would have to pay. Admiral Abbot said the only other tourist trip to the Antarctic that he knew of was the scheme being studied jointly by Air New Zealand and the Holm Travel Company.

This project, which did not seem likely to evenuate this season, Involves the use of a ship at McMurdo Sound as a floating hotel and an air shuttle service for tourists from New Zealand.

This would not have to have the approval of the United States Antarctic Policy Group unless the Nr.vy was asked to supply goods and services. Admiral Abbot said he did not really regard the use of Williams Field as coming into the category of supplying services. “I’d look at it as a dog-in-the-manger attitude, if we had a strip there and we said, ‘No, you can’t land’,” he said. Admiral Abbot said the Antarctic Policy Group’s policy for commercial ventures was that no goods or services could be provided unless it was in the interests of the United States or the progress of Antarctica to do so.