Flight To New Zealand For Heart Operation

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31986, 13 May 1969, Page 18

Flight To New Zealand For Heart Operation

A five-year-old Melbourne boy, David Lowden, who is to undergo a heart operation In Auckland, is expected to arrive in Christchurch tomorrow aboard a United States Military Airlift Command Starlifter jet transport. The boy and his mother would probably travel In a National Airways Corporation aircraft to Auckland, leaving Christchurch between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. tomorrow, a United States Air Force spokesman said yesterday. The Starlifter passed through Christchurch early yesterday on its way to Australia. A United States Air Force officer said in Christchurch that it was a routine flight and should not be considered in any way a special evacua-

tion flight. “It’s just the weekly supply flight," he said. The boy's father is a sergeant in the Royal Australian Air Force and it was considered that it would have caused considerable financial hardship to the family to bring the boy to New Zealand by commercial airline.

The family approached representatives of the R.A.A.F. Welfare Fund, which got in touch with tbe U.S.A.F. base at Richmond. Because the base does not have authority to grant such requests for flights the matter was referred to the Pentagon, which approved the flight. Two U.S.A.F. nurses and two medical corpsmen who specialise in air transport cases, are on the Starlifter. They are based in Japan and flew to Honolulu to join the Starlifter.