DOMINION'S AIR MAILS

Evening Post, Volume CXXI, Issue 83, 7 April 1936, Page 18

DOMINION'S AIR MAILS

OVER 150 COUNTRIES REACHED

1 There are more than 150 countries to which correspondence can be sent [from New Zealand by air mail, using first the steamship links across the jTasman or the Pacific. China has just been added to this list, an Imperial I Airways weekly service having been 'established from Penang (Malaya) to Hong Kong, connecting with the Sydney-Croydon route. • A short Steamer transit from Hong Kong to Canton gives connection with the inland Chinese air-mail services, reaching and a number of other important centres. It is estimated that the transit time for air-mail letters from New Zealand, connecting with the usual Friday intercolonial steamer to Sydney, will be eleven days to Hong Kong, a saving of twenty days compared with the ordinary means of transport, while the saving by air transit of correspondence to Shanghai will be twenty-two days.

Further air-mail in Afrioa are also available to New Zealanders, who may now take advantage of the newly-extended route of Imperial Airways from Khartoum to Kano (Nigeria), El Obeid El Fasher and Geneina (British Sudan) and Fort Lamy (French Equatorial Africa).

The overseas air-mail business of the Post Office is growing. There was an improvement during 3935 which brought the average postings from New Zealand to England to 2500 per week, at which point the business is almost stationary, ' but inward air traffic is showing greater expansion. Last year's average of weekly arrivals of letters from Britain was 2500; it has now reached 3300.