Couple Fly To Sydney

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32354, 21 July 1970, Page 26

Couple Fly To Sydney

A naturalised Canadian of Chinese extraction who on Sunday was refused permission to board a flight from Christchurch to Sydney, yesterday obtained the necessary passport endorsement and. with his wife, flew to Sydney on the 5.15 n.m. Air New Zealand flight.

Mr W. Chow was told on Sunday that he could not board the aircraft to Sydney without a visa, although his Australian-born wife, who also holds a Canadian passport, was told that she could go. Mr Chow, a 26-year-old schoolteacher, spent more than an hour with officials of

the Australian Trade Commission in Christchurch yesterday. A commission spokesman said it was Australian Government policy that certain visitors had to apply for a passport endorsement—not a visa—to enter the country. New Zealand's immigration regulations were “very similar.”

Mr Chow had applied for the endorsement yesterday, and had been given it, the spokesman said. If he had applied for it, as required, before his Sunday flight he would have been given it then. Airline officials had the authority to refuse to allow persons to board the aircraft if they did not have the correct entry papers, the sales manager for Air New Zealand (Mr M. Lockie) said yesterday.

Unless passengers had the correct documents they were not allowed into Australia, and the airline might be required to carry them back to the point from which the flight started. The Air New Zealand officials at the airport were fully conversant with the Australian immigration regulations and were only doing their job when they refused to allow Mr Chow to board the aircraft, Mr Lockie said Mr Chow, who was bom in Singapore but who went to Canada 18 years ago, said yesterday that he would now have to enter Australia as a Chinese visitor.