PACIFIC AIR SERVICE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23364, 2 December 1937, Page 12

PACIFIC AIR SERVICE

IMMEDIATE PLANS OUTLINED CONNECTING LINK WITH HONOLULU \ FULL WEEKLY SCHEDULE LATER (Per United Press Association) WELLINGTON, Dec. 1. An outline of the proposed operation of the Pan-American Airways service from San Francisco to New Zealand, with particular reference to the meteorological problems to be faced, was given by Mr H. G. Gatty, the company’s New Zealand representative, at the Meteorological Conference at Wellington. “ In the beginning of these flights which Pan-American Airways will make down here the flying boats will connect at Honolulu with the through service to China,” Mr Gatty said. “ They will not be running from San Francisco to New Zealand, but from Honolulu, connecting with the service to China. The reason for that is that we will be using a Sikorsky plane, which is not capable of making the flight from Honolulu to San Francisco carrying a payload. Until we get the Boeings on the run, the service will be a connection from Honolulu to Auckland. When we come nn to Kingman Reef, we will have no real difficulties there from the point of view of the weather, unless we get any violent westerly winds which may arise occasionally in December, January and February. Weather Forecasts Important “ The next stage is to Pago Pago, which is not the easiest place to get in and out of,” Mr Gatty said. “It is safe and there are bays on other sides of the island which can be used in an emergency, but there are certainly difficulties in that we cannot land or take off in a northwesterly direction —that is up -he harbour —because we have an 800 ft ridge to clear. The weather forecast is very important, because it means that in three months of the year, if we are liable to get northwesterly winds, we will have to go outside the harbour to take off. "We will not fly at night in the Auckland area,” Mr Gatty continued. “ That is a definite rule the company has laid down. My company considers this a hurricane area, and it means that we will have to make our flights in daylight between Pago Pago and Auckland. It is an 1850-mile flight. We will have to take off before dawn in Pago Pago and land at Auckland around 5 o’clock in the afternoon. That time will be definitely within an hour or two of the time of landing in Auckland. We will have to stay about two days in Auckland for checking and minor overhaul and then start back, taking off from Auckland before dawn to enable a i landing to be made in Pago Pago harbour before dark. There will be no difficulties about the take-off as lights will be strung out on the harbour in the direction of the wind. Emergency Base «We plan to use Russell as an emergency base,” Mr Gatty said, “and to have a wireless station there, purely for the purpose of guiding the plane into the coast by direction-finding. The reason for that is that the high islands outside Auckland are hazardous. It would be dangerous to come in by direc-tion-finding in bad weather past Rangitoto, Great Barrier and other islands. We have put in moorings at Russell, so that in case Auckland is closed in we can hang on to the moorings at Russell until it clears at Auckland or until daylight. “Although we do not know yet what day of the week we will be running,” Mr Gatty concluded, we will run the round trip every two weeks at the start, leaving San Francisco on December 15 and getting down here about December 19, and thereafter every two weeks. We expect to be running every week within a few months after starting. By April we hope to have a Boeing (50-passenger boat) on the iob and running a weekly service.