EMPIRE AIR SERVICE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22832, 17 March 1936, Page 6

EMPIRE AIR SERVICE

THE SYDNEY-DARWIN SECTION NEGOTIATIONS IN LONDON (Per United Press Association) AUCKLAND, March 10. “ Personally, I do not think Australia will give up control of the Imperial air route south of Darwin,” said Mr J. S. W. Stannage, secretary of the trans-/ Tasman Air Service Development Company, the late Sir Charles Kingsford Smith’s organisation, who arrived from Sydney to-day by the Monowai. Mr Stannage remarked that the company had all its preparations complete, even down to the design of its letter heads. All it 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 the two Australian Ministers, Dr Earle Page and Mr R. G. Menzies, had completed their negotiations with the authorities in London. The company had an assurance, however, that Kingsford Smith’s claim to prior consideration on the trans-Tasman route would be fully weighed. The general belief in Australia, Mr Stannage said, was that the scheme put forward by Imperial Airways was too ambitious and too costly. The idea of carrying all first class mail matter by air at 2sd a letter seemed to most people to be premature and ahead of public requirements. The Commonwealth was asked to find a subsidy of £140,000 a year and was faced with enormous loss through the consequential reduction of its present rate of 2d on ordinary letters. Moreover, it would still have to maintain the 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 self-governing 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. Mr Stannage said that a good deal had been made of the argument that there should be unified operation over the whole route, but on the terms proposed this would be a costly advantage. Any time lost in transferring the mails at Darwin was more than made up by use of the overland route instead ot longer coastal routes that large flying boats would have to follow. The whole question was very complicated, but he thought the considerations which he had mentioned were likely to prevail.