AIRPORT PLANS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVIII, Issue 68, 18 September 1944, Page 6

AIRPORT PLANS

EXPLANATORY TALKS

LUNCH-HOUR MEETINGS

The meeting held in the Rongotai College gymnasium on Thursday night, when proposals for the extension of the airport were explained in detail, was confined mainly to residents of the locality, but it is proposed to arrange a series of lunch-hour explanatory talks, with the lantern slides prepared by the City Engineer and his assistants, in the lecture hall of the Public Library. The dates and times of these talks will be announced later, said the Mayor (Mr. Appleton), who remarked that it was necessary that the public should be given a full understanding of the proposals and the reasons why Rongotai was held by the experts who had advised the council to be the one location within economic distance for the development of an adequate aerodrome for Wellington.

The slides pack a lot of information into small space, and those illustrating the proposals for extension of the landing field and for the re-siting of the Rongotai Boys' College and the houses which may be shifted from the streets between Coutts Street and Seatoim Road (Evans Bay) are most useful for an understanding of these proposals.

They emphasise, too, the volume of traffic to and from Rongotai. Last year 30,503 civilian passengers arrived at or departed from Rongotai, compared with 6828 at the Auckland airfield and 1109 at Palmerston North, and the estimate of the Air Department is that -within three years after the war the air passengers at Rongotai will be at least 110,000, provided Rongotai is developed 'to meet the growth in traffic. If it is not, the City Engineer commented at the meeting of .residents, the positions of Wellington and Palmerston North could easily be reversed, and Wellington would be in the position of seeing large passenger planes passing overhead to other Doints.

On the point of distance of the aerodrome from the city, Mr. Luke gave extracts from a survey made by the Civil Aeronautics Administration of the distances of airports in America from the centres of the cities they serve. More than half of the 1547 airports surveyed are within three miles, 75 per cent, are within six miles, and only one airport is 20 miles out. Rongotai is four miles from the Post Office, Porirua (impossible of safe development in any case) is 16 miles, and Paraparaumu 35 miles out. SIZE OF POST-WAR MACHINES. In the controversy over Rongotai a lot has been said of large- and small machines, but the use of the description "small" in distinction from large in the sense of super-planes has given to many an altogether wrong impression. The conception of immediate post-war air travel .in New Zealand is by the employment of a fleet of 20-seaters, probably of the Douglas twin-engined type. Compared with the latest' transocean or transcontinental landplanes— of which the Lockheed Constellation, 60 passengers, and the Douglas Skymaster, 42 passengers, are the most advanced types in service—a 20-passenger plane is small, but it is a much bigger machine than anything flying in New Zealand at present, half as big again as the Union Airways Lockheed Lodestar, the largest passenger plane, carrying 15 passengers. The Lockheed, with iuel bur without passengex-s, weighs 1L0251b, and the 20-seater likely to be used 16,4201b. , These planes have remarkable take-oft' characteristics, and no doubt could be 'flown in and out of Rongotai—but pilots would age rapidly and no insurance undertaking would look at the business.

The Mayor and the chairman of the airport committee (Councillor B. Todd) both emphasised at the meeting in the Rongotai College gymnasium that the best expert advice obtainable is that Rongotai offers the one feasible site within, economic distance of the city, and the three consequential alternative decisions are: Rongotai must be developed to be made safe to handle post-war air travel; or Rongotai must be left off the air map of the Dominion; or all air service in the Dominion must be held back to the low limitations of Rongotai, proved by the passenger, mail, and freight statistics to be the keypoint in internal air service, wherever the airport for overseas aircraft may be. CORRESPONDENT'S POINTS. "Concerned" makes several points in regard to Rongotai. Mr. Hudson Fysh managing director of Qantas Empire Airways, he contends, said that Rongotai would never be suitable for the larger airliners operating between New Zealand and other lands. There are days when mist and fog make Rongotai unworkable. Should Rongotai aerodrome be bombed residents on the Seatpun side would have no means of escape. The noise of flight flying will be seriously disturbing to residents of the eastern suburbs. He writes also of a traffic tunnel "below sea level" under the proposed extension of the landing field to Evans Bay Replies given to a "Post" reporter Hf On *£ ese T P°mts may be summarised thus: Mr. Hucison Fysh did not urge the development of Rongotai for the reception of transocean traffic, but as •Concerned" had stated, primarily for the. rapid expansion of internal air services by larger machines than those at present m service. Rongotai's record oi regularity of service is extraordinarily high (98.7 per cent.). The days on which weather conditions forbid {lying are extremely few, even though the saiety margin is at present low. k ■ Proposed development would obviate the greater part of take-off and landing directly over houses. The traffic tunnel would not be "below sea leve The submerged traffic way ivould not be a tunnel in the usual sense, but a "cut and cover," which, m the opinion of engineers who had considered the project, should occasion no engineering difficulties utAdtaon