AIR MAILS: A FURTHER TRIAL.

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 221, 15 June 1936, Page 8

AIR MAILS: A FURTHER TRIAL.

In deciding to give the inland air mails another trial of three months, the Postmaster-General is putting service before profit. So far, the carriage of air mails has been anything but profitable to the departnient, and the Minister, who started the service because it could be used to expedite the delivery of about 9,000,000. letters a year, might have been excused for dropping the whole thing when results for three months showed that it was likely to carry only abotit 700,000 a year. Instead he is making a second attempt to secure public support comparable with the dispatch advantage that air carriage offers. Good luck to him! There is a school, of thought which holds that it is unsound to charge extra for mail scut by air—that there should be only one postage rate, which should entitle letters to be sent by the quickest available means, be that.road, rail, sea or air. But our surcharge is the lowest in the Empire, and it is distressingly surprising that more use is not made of the air mail, even with its imperfections (which, apart from surcharge, arise chiefly from the timetable and the high efficiency of competing surface services). ft is to be hoped lite next three months will gratify the hope of more substantial support expressed by Mr. Jones. He is being patient and even hopeful in the face of disappointing results, and is obviously anxious to provide a permanent air mail service if the community will only show a demand for it. By the end of August we should know if the community wants the service in its present form. If then the figures show no improvement, some other system might well be given a trial. Meantime the Post Office deserves the widest possible support for the present system, on which it has spent considerable time, thought and money. There was a cal! for. air mails almost as soon as the air companies started flying. The business interests that were clamant in asking for the service now have three months more to show how real is their desire to have it maintained.