WELLINGTON’S AIR-PORT

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 201, 22 May 1936, Page 10

WELLINGTON’S AIR-PORT

The prospect of Wellington’s being linked to Auckland by air, with stops at Palmerston North and New Plymouth, is. especially attractive after four months of the existing' services, which do not touch Auckland at all and exclude Wellington from the trunk route. Up to a point Wellington’s exclusion is her own fault. Counsel for Union Airways, to whom the trunk licence was granted, told the Transport Co-ordination Board that his client would not risk calling at Rongotai aerodrome until the facilities were better. At the time of the hearing, proposals for improvements and extensions at Rongotai were under consideration, and some preliminary work had been done; but the fact remains that the coming of commercial aviation, despite authoritative warnings, caught Wellington unprepared. Or, if not Wellington generally, at any rate the Wellington City Council, which is the authority controlling the Rongotai airport. Now, however, all that is past and done with: developmental work is being pushed ahead, and the City Council is asking Parliament for authority to reclaim sufficient of the foreshore to make of Rongotai as good an airport as it would be possible to make anywhere within the girdle of hills that encircles the capital city. The approaching extension of the trunk service to Auckland, and the opportunity offered to Wellington of obtaining direct air contact not only with that city, but also with Palmerston North and New Plymouth —both of which have been quick to capitalise the natural advantages of their airports—is an additional compelling reason for concentrating civic effort in the next few months upon the work for lack of which the city was passed by last time.