AIRFIELD ISOLATED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26749, 19 April 1948, Page 5

AIRFIELD ISOLATED

RUSSIANS ESTABLISH ROAD BLOCKS VIENNA-LONDON SERVICE N.Z.P.A.—Copyright Rec. 9 p.m. LONDON, Apl. 16. The Soviet road control post prevented intending Vienna-London air passengers from reaching the British airfield at Schwechat, and the passengers returned to Vienna for the night, says Reuter’s Vienna correspondent. Russian sentries were demanding the, grey Four-Power passes, which have never been necessary before on the airport road through the Russian zone. British and Allied civilian passengers who arrived at Schwechat from London and Germany, by the afternoon plane finally reached Vienna. The Russians permitted them to paos through the check points when the civilians showed their passports. The Russians refused to pass the plane’s crew or military personnel' who refused to show identification. The plane could not make a feturn flight to London and was grounded for the night because the intending passengers in Vienna were not permitted through the Russian road blocks. The Associated Press Berlin correspondent says it is reliably learned that Marshal Sokolovsky the Russian area commander, returned to Berlin to-day. He has been in Moscow for the past week for consultations on the. handling of the German situation with the Western Powers. The, Russian authorities, in a letter to the British 'High Commissioner, General Galloway, demanded that all commercial flights into the British airport outside Vienna should cease forthwith.

The letter complained that the number of flights from Schwechat airport had increased, and that this could only mean that the British authorities were using the airp<3rt “ in the interests of commercial aviation.” The letter quoted an agreement reached in July, 1945, that the airport would be under the control of the British Armed Forces “for the joint use of the British and French Armed Forces.” . ,_ , A British spokesman said the flights would continue, and he added that the Russians had no grounds for discontinuance as» the agreement did not specify the types of planes to be used. British European Airways has been flying the London-Vienna service since the R.A.F. Transport Command stopped a year ago. , Earlier, at an Allied Control Council meetings, the Russians rejected British and American protests against the Soviet travel restrictions. The Russians asserted that each com-mander-in-chief was entitled to legulate traffic in his zone within “ the requirements of security.”