South Pacific

Airmail

P.A.A. Plans Held Up—Lack of Equipment—No Sign Yet of Noumea Service

ALTHOUGH it was announced definitely in "Noumea at the end of December that a contract had been made be tween the French Government and Pan- American Airways, under which a P.A.A. twice-monthly service between Honolulu, Noumea and Australia would be com menced before June 30, there are indi cations that P.A.A. are not proceeding with the plan. The French authorities are equipping Nouville (near Noumea) as a seaplane station; but, apparently, P.A.A. are held up by lack of equipment.

The following article written by John Williams in Honolulu on March 22, throws an interesting light upon the situ ation.

By John Williams

THE excellent round-up of latest facts in the slow progress of trans pacific aviation plans in the February issue of “P.1.M.” aroused a lot of in terest in this air-minded section of the Pacific—particularly the statements that Pan-American Airways hope to fly to Australia via Canton Island and Noumea.

Informed circles here are interested in how Pan-American will do it because from the American point of view, the com pany seems to lack sufficient equipment to launch all the services that have been planned in recent years.

The company has six new Boeing clippers on its hands. The first was launched a year ago and, under govern ment supervision, has been exhaustively tested but it is not yet in scheduled pas senger service.

A Boeing left San Francisco on its first ocean-proving flight on February 22, but did not return from the round trip to Hong Kong until 21 days later: wea ther and mechanical difficulties delayed it six days en route.

Another Boeing left San Francisco on March 15 but so far (March 23), it has lost three days.

First passenger flight in the Boeings was set by the company for March 15, but this date has come and gone, with the Government ban still on passenger carrying.

Public interest, naturally, was aroused by the comings and goings of the new clippers and the question was pressed; “Where will they be used?”

On March 8, the P.A.A. San Francisco office announced that four of the Boeings would go into service on the North Atlan tic, to counter British and other Euro pean competition, and the remaining two would be used to augment the North Pacific service from California to the Orient.

The company spokesman added that the proposed service to the South Pacific “would be abandoned temporarily”.

“New York Times” on February 26 re ported that the U.S. Government, via its Civil Aeronautics Authority, had refused to allow 7 Pan-American to use Sikorsky S-43 “baby” clippers for passenger carrying on the company’s proposed Seattle-Alaska coastal airline.

Washington’s attitude now is that the American taxpayers, who foot the bill for the air services via post office subsidies,

must be given more and better service.

That is, rather than launching American planes into doubtful paying services like that to New Zealand would be, the Gov ernment wants more action on the ser vices more likely to pay: From California to Hawaii; from New York to Europe; and from Seattle to Alaska.

On March 11 P.A.A. announced that it intended applying to the Government for permission to carry out test flights across the North Atlantic with the Boeing land planes (dubbed stratoliners, because they would operate at 18,000 feet or so) and thus copy the experiments in flying oceans with landplanes, first tested by British Imperial Airways.

If the stratoliners stood up to it, the company probably saw this as an answer to their lack of equipment.

But on March 18 bad luck again dogged the company. During a test flight of the first stratoliner at Seattle (test flights commenced three months ago), the big 33-passenger craft went into a spin and crashed, killing ten experts aboard.