MAILS BY AIR.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIV, Issue 109, 7 April 1934, Page 8

MAILS BY AIR.

DEFENCE MACHINES’ AID. Per Press Association. WELLINGTON, April 6. The enterprise of Sir Charles Kingsford Smith and Mr C. T. P. Ulm in pioneering the carriage of mails in the Southern Cross and the Faith in Australia between Australia and New Zealand will receive a further fillip by arrangements no-w completed for the distribution of air-mail on its arrival in New Plymouth to some of the prinicipal centres of the Dominion by Air Force machines of the Defence Department. The project of the Defence Department in helping the Post and Telegraph Department in quickly delivering eagerly looked forward to air-mail in both Islands has been receiving the consideration of the Minister of Defence (Hon. J. G. Cobbe) for some time, and the Minister stated this evening that it had now been found possible for the Air Force branch of the Defence Department to link up in the enterprise of demonstrating the possibilities of air-mails. “The use of service aeroplanes,” said the Minister, “has been authorised to distribute transtasman airmails due to arrive at New Plymouth on Wednesday by the Faith in Australia. Planes will be used for the transport of mails from New Plymouth to Auckland and Wellington, and possibly Christchurch. Should the South Island portion of the mail be small and the time of arrival .permit, a machine from Wigram aerodrome will carry it on its homeward journey.” Mr Cobbe added that, quite apart from the interest philatelists took in air-mail stamps, it was evident, from the large number of letters carried in the initial trips of the Faith in Australia and the Southern Cross, that there were many relatives and friends residing in the two countries.