DUTCH AIRLINE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23831, 10 June 1939, Page 28

DUTCH AIRLINE

LONDON TO SYDNEY ' NEW ZEALAND NEXT (From Our Own Correspondent) SYDNEY. June 3. The Royal Netherlands Airways (K.L.M.) Douglas DCS airliner, which left Amsterdam last week, will probably inaugurate a Dutch once-a-week air service between London and Sydney. The next objective of K.L.M. will be New Zealand. The Consul-general for the Netherlands, Mr T. Elink Schuurman, interviewed officials in Canberra and notified the intention of the K.L.M. to enter Australia under the agreement by which landing rights were granted to the RoyaJ Netherlands Indies Colonial Air Line (K.N.1.L.M.), which is at present operating a twice-weekly service between Batavia and Sydney. Pressure, it is stated, had been brought to bear on the Netherlands Indies Colonial Government by the Dutch Home Government, and the K.N.I.L.M. will now charter a K.L.M. airliner and crew once weekly to proceed on to Sydney from Batavia. In its negotiations with the Consul-general for the Netherlands, the Commonwealth Government has been embarrassed by an ambiguous letter which admitted the K.N.I.L.M. to Australia. This letter can be construed to mean that the Dutch can send into Australia as many air lines as they like, and the Government was faced with the question of repudiating the agreement or interpreting it literally as proposed by the Dutch Home Government. As the Australian Government has always insisted in the past that an Australian company should operate the Singapore-Sydney section of the Empire route, it will be placed in a peculiar position if Imperial Airways, Ltd., applies to fly straight through to Sydney. As it has granted permission to the K.L.M. to fly straight through from London to Sydney, it could hardly refuse a British air line if it made a similar request. The new move means increased competition for the Empire flyingboat service, which is operated between Southampton and Singapore by Imperial Airways and by Qantas from Malaya to Sydney. The weekly K.L.M. service will now fly all the way through with Douglas DCS airliners, and the K.L.M. has drawn up schedules for a two days and a-half service between Amsterdam and Batavia and a three days and a-half service between London and Sydney for 1942, with giant fourengined Douglas DC4 airliners, with sleeping accommodation for 20. In consideration for granting a British air line the right to-fly over the Netherlands Indies, the Dutch have now received permission to fly over British India and to operate two air lines to Australia. The K.L.M. is the main Dutcli trunk line, and it plans to cross the Pacific, establish a link with its service in the West Indies, and then cross the Atlantic back to Amsterdam.