AIR MAIL VIA PACIFIC

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 4, 4 July 1940, Page 10

AIR MAIL VIA PACIFIC

The institution of the Empire Air Mail was the greatest advance in Imperial communications since the ocean liner superseded the sailing ship, and of all countries of the Empire New Zealand, being the furthest away from the Motherland, benefited the most. The halving of the minimum time taken by the fastest ocean mail service, a month at monthly intervals, gave a new impetus to correspondence, when air mail, at cheap rates, could be posted at one side of the world and delivered at the other within a fortnight. In conjunction with the recently inaugurated trans-Tasman air mail, under normal peacetime conditions, the service might have been expedited even further. All that has gone by the board with the intervention of Italy in the war and the collapse of France. There is no real substitute for the Empire service, and, accordingly, its absence today has been felt very seriously, in New Zealand especially.

Under the circumstances the decision of Pan-American Airways to establish, on a regular basis, a transPacific air service between San Francisco and Auckland, beginning this month, will be welcomed in this country. What is to be done with New Zealand mail offering by this route is not yet quite clear. Yesterday's New York message contained the following relevant passage:

It is not certain whether the sei> vice will carry direct Australian mail. The Post Office (the U.S. institution) has announced that Australian mail will not be carried, but the company announces that such mail will be carried at 60 cents a half-ounce, compared with 50 cents to New Zealand.

Nothing is said about through rates between New Zealand and Great Britain. Further information on this and other points would be appreciated by the public here, particularly with the presence of New Zealand troops in Britain.