TASMAN AIR SERVICE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26917, 1 November 1948, Page 6

TASMAN AIR SERVICE

CHOICE OF FLYING BOATS COMMENDED p.A. AUCKLAND. Oct. 31. The choice of flying boats for a further period for the Tasman service was wise, said Mr G. N. Roberts, general manager of Tasman Empire Airways, Ltd., on his arrival from overseas on Saturday. Mr Roberts has visited Belfast to see the progress being made on the building of the four Solent flying boats which are due for delivery in New Zealand early in the new year. He also attended a conference of. the International Air Transport Association at Brussels, and spent four weeks in the United States. Mr Roberts said he was keeping an open mind on the type which should follow the Solent. Whether an operator used land planes or flying boats depended on the problems facing l.im. Both should have a place in the sun, and if the flying boat died out the world would be poorer. Mr Roberts said he believed that governments and the public generally expected airlines to stand on their own feet financially and not be pampered by heavy subsidies, direct or indirect. Caution was necessary in the assessment of the relative merits of land planes and flying, boats in the British world-wide air network, continued Mr Roberts. In Great Britain the aircraft industry had great faith in the success of the giant Saunders-Roe flying boat, and the Tasman was widely quoted as a logical flying boat route.