NEW ZEALAND TO ENGLAND

Taranaki Daily News, 13 September 1934, Page 13

NEW ZEALAND TO ENGLAND

LIKELY CHRISTMAS AIR MAIL. SCHEMES FOR TASMAN FLIGHT. Though no official announcement will be made for some time, it is probable that Christmas letters from England to New Zealand and from New Zealand to England will travel all the way by air this year. This will be the longest air mail connection in the world. The first machines on the Imperial Airways service between England and Australia will leave Brisbane and Croydon on December 5 and December 8 respectively. The flight between the two countries will take approximately a fortnight, so that letters from England could be brought from Brisbane to New Zealand by air for Christmas with two or three days to spare. • Two concerns are known to intend approaching the New Zealand Post and Telegraph Department with offers to make the Tasman flight, presumably under the same financial arrangements as those made with Sir Charles KingsfordSmith and Mr. C. T. P. Ulm, when they have taken mails between New Zealand and Australia recently. It is, indeed, reported that one airman has already approached the Post Office authorities.

It is considered almost certain, in view of the inauguration of the air mail between England and Australia, that the New Zealand Post Office will agree to an air connection with it. It is also thought possible that New Zealand will issue a special stamp to mark the occasion. That was done—not without profit to the Post Office and, incidentally to philatelists—on one previous occasion, when Mr. Ulm carried the first official mail from the Dominion to Australia. In 1931, Australian National Airways took Christmas mail from Australia to England—tire Southern Sun, flown by Mr. G. U. Allen, crashed at Alor Star, and Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith set out with the Southern Star and took the mail on—but that was purely an experimental flight. The flights this year will be the first of the regular service over the longest air-line in the world. In 1931, too, Christmas air mails were carried throughout New Zealand by air, and it is possible that aeroplanes will be used to take mail to the point of departure of the Tasman air mail machine, and to distribute the English letters when they arrive.