FUTURE OF CIVIL AVIATION

Dominion, Volume 38, Issue 306, 25 September 1945, Page 6

FUTURE OF CIVIL AVIATION

Review Of London

Conferences N.Z. DELEGATE’S RETURN

(By Telegraph.—Press Association.) AUCKLAND, September 24. Having attended three major conferences in London where matters having an important bearing on the f « tur ®. ® civil aviation were discussed, the vice chief of the air staff, Air Commodme A de T Nevill, who left for Britain last June! returned’ to New Zealand by a Liberator aircraft oi the R.A.I. Tians port Command, P ac ! fic . . Service ;’ n /Vinm arrived at Whenuapai this morning iiom San Diego. Air Commodore Nevill was also a New Zealand delegate at the International Aviation Conference tn Chicago last year and he was tormeily air officer commanding the R.N.Z.A.E. beadquarters in London. He left for M ellin = - ton by air this afternoon. ' Some of the important developments arising from the conferences he attended were reviewed by Air Commodore Nevill on his arrival. He left New Zealand in June primarily to attend the first meetme of the Commonwealth Air Transport Council in London. This is an advisory council for the development of British Commonwealth air routes. Very considerable progress, he said, was made there, particularly with regard to the details of the very elaborate ground organization required for the trunk routes throughout the Commonwealth. Progress was also made with the Pacific route, which affects New Zealand. Air Commodore Nevill later attended the Commonwealth and Empire Conference on radio for civil aviation, which was a highly technical conference attended by the best brains lu radar and radio work in the Commonwealth and the United Kingdom. The conference, he added, was preceded by a series of very remarkable demonstrations which gave promise of an early and complete solution of the difficulties which previously faced aircraft on heavily-congested air routes.

“We are very near the stage where aircraft can land under zero conditions of visibility and can avoid collision in the air by the use of modern radar methods,” said Air Commodore Nevill. “The great problems facing civil aviation today on heavily congested air routes and on the large airports of Europe and North America are primarily concerned with the means of controlling the large volume of passenger traffic in bad weather, both along the routes and in the controlled zones around the airports. The third conference attended by Air Commodore Nevill was the 2Sth session of the International Convention of Air Navigation. The convention was signed at Paris in 1919 and New Zealand, as well as other parts of the British Commonwealth, was a signatory, said Air Commodore Nevill. It had been inoperative during the war as its seat was in Paris. In view of the remarkable technical development of air navigation during the war, it was necessary to revise many of the technical annexes of this convention.