AIR TRAVEL SAFETY

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 14, 17 July 1939, Page 11

AIR TRAVEL SAFETY

PARAPARAUMU FIELD

FOR EMERGENCY ONLY

NOT A CALLING PLACE

The Paraparaumu landing ground, to which representatives of local bodies and the public were invited on Saturday afternoon to see a demonstration of power plant at work in high-speed levelling, is not to be a calling place for air services, nor is it in any sense an alternative to Rongotai Aerodrome for the handling of the huge air traffice which is being so rapidly built up in and out of Wellington. It is merely one of the chain of emergency landing fields for the greater safety of air travel.

The Paraparaumu field will have an. area of 103 acres, on the sandhill waste west of the main road, but if necessary a big extension can be "made. That, however, is likely to be well in the future, for the levelling in hand will give runways of 1000 yards northsouth, 660 yards nor'-west-sou'-east, and | 950 yards eastrwest, considerably longer, than are at present available at Rongotai and capable of handling any type of machine, which Rongotai is not. j STRAIGHT LEVELLING JOB. As the country at Paraparaumu is practiqally all sand the power plant is making very rapid progress, and the field is to be completed as regards levelling within ten weeks. The top soil has been put to one side and will I be respread for a grassed surface later j on. ' . ■ I

It is not proposed to erect buildings; the field will presumably return to grazing and will be simply one of the chain of passive fields set out by the aerodrome branch of the Public Works Department from end to end of the Dominion, preferably not used at all by passenger and mail machines, but essential should emergency arise.

The field has, of course, a clear place in the system of air defence.

When the emergency ground plan was first laid down the idea was to space these fields at intervals of 30 or 35 miles along all much-travelled routes, but all passenger planes in use are multi-engined, and such close spacing is not considered necessary; nevertheless the chain of regular aerodromes and emergency fields in New Zealand compares more than well with the system of overseas countries. TOO FAR AWAY TO REPLACE RONGOTAI. Paraparaumu is an hour and a quarter by road from Wellington, and when the sea-level road is opened will still be a good hour away, a time distance far too great to be considered -as a take-off aerodrome for tlie Cook Strait and Christchurch services, for more time would be spent in getting to the planes than would be spent in them, so here no easy solution of the seriousproblem of extending Rongotai run-' ways can be found. Last year over 27,000 passengers passed through Rongotai; this year the total will certainly exceed 40,000, and may reach 60,000. For such air traffic Rongotai is patently inadequate.