Fourth Boeing to arrive soon

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32635, 17 June 1971, Page 1

Fourth Boeing to arrive soon

(New tealand Press Association) WELLINGTON, June 16. The National Airways Corporation’s fourth Boeing jet will arrive in New Zealand on July 21 and will enter service on August 20.

After its arrival in Christchurch the new aircraft will be checked and then used for flight training until the start of the August school holidays. The Boeing fleet of four will then be used from August 20 to September 10 after which each of the existing aircraft will be withdrawn for two weeks for their annual maintenance checks. From October 22 all four aircraft will be flying fulltime. With the four Boeings, all main trunk services from Wellington to Auckland will be flown by the jets. This will give an extra 30 seats a flight and faster trip times. At the same time all

flights will be flown by Boeings, and Dunedin will be given a second daily Boeing service.,

The corporation said today that the aim was to replace as many long-distance Viscount flights as possible by the larger and faster Boeings.

This would leave spare capacity in the Viscount fleet, which would mean that the present practice of replacing Viscounts by Friendships south of Christchurch when Viscount maintenance was necessary, would cease. When the Hamilton Airport was extended, Viscounts could be used on HamiltonPalmerston North-Christ-church services. In turn, the replacement of Friendships by Viscounts on these runs would give the corporation a little spare capacity in the Friendship fleet.

This spare time would be used to improve provincial services, but the corporation said no details had yet been determined.

The fourth Boeing was originally leased by the Boeing company to Aloha Airlines of Hawaii for six months. Although it has flown about 700 hours the corporation has bought it at a price some $700,000 less than a new one.

At present the aircraft is at the Boeing works at Seattle being refurnished to suit NAC.’i requirements.