FLYING-BOAT SERVICES

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 94, 15 January 1936, Page 10

FLYING-BOAT SERVICES

Pilots For Singapore and

Tasman Routes

Dominion Special Service. Sydney, January 2.

Australian pilots are watching with interest and not without some little apprehension every development of the projects for the Singapore-Australian and Tasman Sea flying-boat services. Advice circulating among flying men is to the effect that Imperial Airways, Ltd., are training English pilots for the Singapore-Sydney flying-boat service, although the matter has not yet been discussed by the Federal Cabinet, and Commonwealth pilots presume that if Imperial Airways are successful in obtaining this service, they will be debarred from attaining what are really .the highest, most responsible and most locative positions that aviation in Aus tralia will be able to offer. ■ If Imperial Airways use English pilots on the Singapore-Sydney service, they regard it as certain that it would do likewise on a similar service across I the Tasman Sea. ■ Their rivals for that service, TransTasman Air Development, Ltd., the concern established by Sir Charles Kingsford Smith, is pledged to use Australian and New Zealand personnel for that crossing, however. “We feel that Australian pilots should be given every opportunity which Australian aviation might offer,’’ said one commercial pilot. Australia and New Zealand can furnish pilots of equal ability and equal experience to those which the English company would put on the service, and, in addition, they would have practical experience with our weather conditions, so that there can be noground for a preference to overseas pilots for either the Singa-pore-Sydney or the Tasman Sea route.”