The Trans-Tasman Air Service

Southland Times, Issue 24112, 29 April 1940, Page 6

The Trans-Tasman Air Service

IT WOULD be pleasant to be able to describe the inaugural flight of the trans-Tasman air service, which takes place tomorrow, as the climax of a rapid and efficient organization. The preparations should prove to have been efficient; but they have been anything but rapid. Indeed, the process has been so leisurely, and interrupted so often for reasons that were seldom explained satisfactorily, that few persons can have retained the enthusiasm with which the project was first welcomed. From the beginning this Dominion lagged behind other parts of the Empire in the development of air services. When at last the tardy beginning was made it was found that the negotiations with Australian and British authorities produced unexpected difficulties. There is little point in deciding now where the blame lay, or why so much time had to pass, after the initial survey flight, before the last of many promises of “an early start” could be fulfilled. The war may have raised new obstacles in the final stage; but there had been delays and disappointed hopes long before the outbreak of hostilities.

It is, of course, a matter of great importance that communications between New Zealand and Australia should be speeded up in war time, and there will be general satisfaction that this result

has been achieved. Civilian interest in the service may have to be confined, for some time to come, to the improved postal facilities. Normally there would have been an added stimulus for trans-Tasman travel; but the financial regulations will inevitably restrict the number of passengers. Now that the service has been established it is to be hoped that efforts will be made to co-ordin-ate the overseas and inland air mails. The Postmaster-General said last week that this would be done “whenever a saving in delivery time could be effected,” but he added, rather ominously, that the system would make use of “the curtailed air services now in operation.” Memories of past delays and the awareness of present difficulties make it hard to give the new service an unqualified welcome. But there, is at least cause for satisfaction in the thought that New Zealand has become the Pacific terminus of the Empire air network. Even if part of the value of the service must remain merely potential until the return of more settled times, the essential advance has been made, and the framework exists for a future expansion.