EQUIPMENT HERE

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 40, 17 February 1937, Page 12

EQUIPMENT HERE

"WAITING FOR WEEKS"

UNFORESEEN MARITIME STRIKE

When asked today if the statement published in Auckland that serious difficulties had arisen between the PanAmerican Airways Company and the New Zealand Government in regard to the company's proposal to establish a flying-boat service down the Pacific to New Zealand, Mr. Harold Gatty, the representative of the company in New Zealand, replied that he had from the very commencement of the extremelyprotracted negotiations refrained from referring to the nature of the discussions publicly, for the company's attitude was that it would have been improper to have taken any step which would unduly stir up public interest and opinion while the negotiations were in progress.

Mr. Gatty repeated that the relations between himself and the Government had throughout been of a most friendly nature and that he had been treated with the utmost courtesy.

"I have every hope that the discussions will be concluded satisfactorily very shortly now," said Mr. Gatty. "An agreement was signed fifteen months ago, and it is perfectly correct that nearly three months ago three experts of the company arrived in New Zealand, bringing with them all the equipment necessary for the establishment of such terminal facilities as are necessary for the reception and overhaul of the machines.

"These officers are still in New Zealand awaiting instructions to commence their work. Further north, all is ready for the operation of the bases, and the position is that the company is ready, and has been ready for weeks now, to commence exploratory flights down the Pacific as the essential preliminary to the institution of the regu•ar services provided for in the agreement signed in 1935.

"Had it not been, for the intervention of the long- maritime strike in the Pacific, an altogether unforeseen circumstance," Mr. Gatty concluded, "the company's operation experts and their equipment could have been here weeks earlier than was possible in the face of the shipping: hold-up."