ACROSS THE PACIFIC

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23205, 1 June 1937, Page 14

ACROSS THE PACIFIC

REGULAR AIR SERVICE INVESTIGATIONS BY EXPERT LINKING UP WITH AMERICA (Per United Press Association) AUCKLAND, May 31. No doubt that New Zealand and Australia will soon be linked with the United States and Canada is entertained by Mr W. T. Miller, superintendent of airways of. the United States Bureau of Commerce, who was a through passenger for San Francisco by the Mariposa after making an investigation into the possibilities of regular commercial and mail air services across the Pacific. As a result of his investigations in New Zealand and Australia he said he is convinced that it will not be long before the recent survey flight across the Pacific by the PanAmerican Airways Clipper is succeeded. by “ time-table " crossings. Suggestions have been made that New Zealand might possibly be left out of the route of the regular mail and passenger air service, but Mr Miller said he considered New Zealand was a most important link. Canada would also have to be included. To his mind the United States and Canada not only thought as ohg country but were also working as one country, and such an air service as he envisaged would be from “Australasia , and North America." . “One of the main objects of my visit,” said Mr Miller, “ was to ascertain as far as possible how much business would be offering for such a service across the Pacific, and I have come to the conclusion that it is going to be only a very short period of time before New Zealand, Australia and America are linked up with a fast passenger and mail service by air. Whether _it will be sponsored from America or the Antipodes is, not for'the to say, but justification for such a service is ‘ .-“ My view is that the Governments of the countries concerned will have to get together and come to some suitable arrangement. Every detail will have to be worked out before any service can be established.” It might easily be, he said, that there would be sufficient encouragement for more than one company to run a service, but nothing positive had yet been arrived at, and the whole thing was a matter for the respective Governments, If it were decided to assist an air service no doubt a reciprocal agreement would have to be drawn up. Under United States regulations mail was carried under contract, and for this reason he could not say whether the Pan-American Airways Company would be responsible for the service if it were organised. Tenders for the mail contract would have to be called, and the successful tenderer would have the right to a mail monopoly by air. It was to be remembered, however, that the PanAmerican Airways was the only large international operator in the United States. Its officers had done a very good job in bringing the Clipper ship down to Auckland on the recent survey flight. ' Once the service was started, he said, the world would be encircled by air routes, because a regular service across the Atlantic could not be far off, and once the Pacific was spanned, or even before, regular passenger and mail flights across the Tasman between New Zealand and Australia would have to come. The flight across the Tasman should be accomplished by aeroplanes, leaving one terminal in the morning and arriving at the other in the afternoom High altitudes, possibly an average of 12,000 feet, would probably be necessary in order to avoid storms in certain areas. Mr Miller is to make a report on his visit to New Zealand and Australia to his department. In each country he took the opportunity of travelling by the principal air lines.