Aircraft broker seeks costs

Press, 10 May 1979, Page 2

Aircraft broker seeks costs

NZPA London The aircraft broker, Mr Brian Neely, will return to New Zealand this week to begin a legal battle against the Government for an undisclosed figure for loss of business. The claim by Mr Neely’s company. Island Associates, is believed to run into six figures, representing costs incurred when the Government blocked the company’s purchase of five former Royal New Zealand Air Force DC3 aircraft.

The Government, acting on public statements by the member of Parliament for Papanui (Mr M. K. Moore) thought the aircraft were illegally being sold to Rhodesia but the Government’s own inquiries showed subsequently that the buyer was West African Air Cargo in Ghana, as Mr Neely had said it was.

Six months after the sale, the aircraft are still in store at Christchurch because while the Government delayed the sale, the fuel situation worsened and there is now not enough fuel to allow

the five DC3s to be ferried to Ghana.

Parking and maintenance costs at Christchurch Airport have added to the expenses mounting up for Island Associates.

Mr Neely arrived back in Britain at the week-end after spending two weeks in Ghana, trying to salvage the original contract which would have allowed West African Cargo to “wet lease” the five aircraft from Island Associates. (The lease arrangement means that Island Associates owns and flies the aircraft for West African Air.)

Mr Neely said the original contract with the Ghana company was now null and void but he told the NZPA that his company still hoped to continue the transaction “provided we can get fuel to get the aircraft out of New Zealand.”

Mr Neely, who left London yesterday for New Zealand, remains bitter about the Government’s block, and later approval, of the sale. “We could see its point of view,” he said, “but I wonder whether it ever saw ours.”