EMPIRE AIR SERVICE

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXVI, Issue 81, 17 March 1936, Page 10

EMPIRE AIR SERVICE

Australia’s Attitude

MR. STANNAGE’S VIEWS By Telegraph—Press Association. AUCKLAND, March 16. “Personally, I do not think that Australia will give up control of the Imperial air route south of Darwin,” said Mr J. 8. W. Stannage secretary of the Trans-Tasman Air Service Development Co., the late Sir Charles KingsfordSmith’s organisation, who arrived from Sydney by the Monowai. Mr. Stannage remarked that his own company had all its preparations complete, even down to the design for its letter heads. All is could do now was to await the Commonwealth Government’s decision in the controversy with Imperial Airways regarding the Darwin-Sydney service. This was not expected until after two Ministers, Dr. Earle Page and the Hon. It. G. Menzies, had completed their negotiations with the authorities in London. However, the company had an assurance that Sir Charles Kings-ford-Smith’s claim to prior consideration on the trans Tasman route would be fully weighed.

The general belief in Australia, said Mr Stannage, was that the scheme put forward by Imperial Ait-ways was too ambitious and too costly. The idea of carrying all first-class mail matter by air at 2Jd a letter seemed to most people to be ahead of public requirements. The Commonwealth was asked to find a subsidy of £lO,OOO a year and wns faced with enormous loss through the consequential reduction of its present rate of 2d on ordinary letters. Moreover, it would still have to maintain steamship mail subsidies which, in fact, rather urgently required to be increased. Australians were inclined to doubt that the British Government fully supported the proposals of Imperial Airways. The latter, in extending its eastern service, had not previously had to deal with selfgoverning British Dominions. Perhaps it did not fully realise that Australia had a primary right to control air services within its own territory. The Commonwealth, in any case, had its own internal services to maintain and it might very well elect to carry on the Imperial service permanently between Darwin and Sydney. A good deal had been made of the argument that there should be unified operation over the whole route, said Mr Stannage, but on the terms proposed this would be a costly advantage. Any time lost in transferring mails at Darwin was more than made up by the use of the overland route instead of the longer coastal route that the large flying-boats would have to follow.

The whole question was very complicated, said Mr Stannage in conclusion, but he thought that the considerations he had mentioned were likely to prevail.