OVERSEAS AIR MAILS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 75, 30 March 1939, Page 11

OVERSEAS AIR MAILS

UNCERTAIN ARRIVALS

DUE TO SHIPPING

The arrival of English air mails in New Zealand depends at present entirely upon the shipping that happens to be available to bring the mail across the Tasman. Although the air mail may reach Australia three times a week, the Dominion cannot receive its share of the mail as frequently as that. Until the trans-Tasman air service is in operation, the uncertainty as to the air mail's arrival in this 'country will continue.

An example of this uncertainty has been furnished during the last fewdays. The Post Office expected an English air mail to come by the Awatea on her last trip, and for some days its official mail notices announced that it would. The Awatea was scheduled to leave Sydney last Saturday, and so it did, but without the expected air mail, because the English mail did not reach Sydney until the day after the Awatea's departure. As soon as the Post Office knew this, the incoming mail notices were altered. This missing of the air mail on the part of the Awatea means that New Zealand will not get any air mail from England until April 3, when the Awatea returns to Wellington. As the last air mail to be brought across the Tasman was that on the Dominion Monarch, which arrived last Saturday, more than a week will have elapsed between the arrival of the last mail and that of the next. For this the Post Office cannot justly be blamed, since it has no control over s the shipping time-tables and can only utilise whatever shipping happens to be available.

Mail notices giving dates of the expected arrivals of incoming air mails are compiled from the latest information available1 to the Post Office, but it does occasionally happen Cas in the case of th 6 Awatea) that expectations are not realised. Until an air mail actually reaches Sydney it cannot be stated with absolute certainty by what ship it will be brought across the Tasman. It may'just miss *one by a few hours, and those few hours may mean several days' delay in crossing the Tasman.

Three boats left Australia for New Zealand at the end of last week, within a day or so of each other, the Wanganella, the Dominion Monarch, and the Awatea. But there was only one mail to bring across—the 45 bags oh the Dominion Monarch. Had the Awatea left 24 hours later there would have been another mail. When she arrives next week she will bring the accumulated air mails of the intervening eight or nine days. ,