Pacific Air
pp. 17-18 · Read in the full issue
Service
American and British Plans
THERE has been considerable activity during the month, connected with plans to inaugurate a trans-Pacific air-mail service between New Zealand and San Francisco, but no date had yet been given for the inauguration of a regular service.
The long-standing difficulties between Pan American Airways and the United States Government appear to have been smoothed away, and it was announced on October 26 that Pan American Airways will receive from the United States Gov ernment an increase of about 67 i per cent, in the mail subsidy for its North Pacific service—and it is presumed that this will apply, also, to its Central and South Pacific service. It gets a further concession in that it now is allowed to retain, in addi tion to the subsidy, all moneys that may be paid to it for mail transportation by the Australian and New Zealand Govern ments.
Preparations have been afoot, in many places, in the belief that Pan American Airways will inaugurate at least a fort nightly service between San Francisco and Auckland, via Canton Island and Noumea (and, possibly, Suva) before the end of November; but no official an nouncement has been made.
P.A.A. Service By End Of Year
The commencement of the American service is confidently expected before the end of the year, however.
Pan American Airways are expected to use Boeing flying-boats—weighing 40 tons, the largest flying-boats in the world —on the South Pacific air-mail.
Meanwhile, the British company (Im perial Airways) have given no indication of their further plans, which have been completely dislocated by the war. They had three new flying-boats, each of 22 tons, practically ready to start the Sydney- Auckland service—with a probable exten sion to Fiji, Honolulu and the American coast—about October; but the outbreak of war meant that two of the three fly ing boats had to be diverted to other purposes. One flying-boat, the “Aotearoa”, had arrived in Australia before the war broke out, and it made a pioneer flight between Sydney and Auckland on August 28.
Since then, the “Aotearoa” has made a number of pioneer flights between Sydney and Auckland, Auckland and Suva, and between Auckland and Tonga; and it has been unofficially reported that Imperial Airways will inaugurate shortly a fort nightly service with the “Aotearoa” be tween Sydney and Auckland. There is no confirmation of this, however.
The Pan American Airways trans pacific service may be expected at any time; but it seems unlikely that Imperial Airways will attempt anything ambitious —beyond the inauguration, perhaps, of the service between Sydney and Auckland —until the European war situation has been cleared up.
Philatelists’ Excitement
Frisco, Oct. 16.
UPWARDS of 70,000 first-flight covers are piled in orderly stacks at the Ferry Street Post Office, in San Fran cisco, awaiting the first mail flight by
Pan American Airways to New Zealand via Honolulu, Canton Island and New Caledonia. Allowing for covers which have been sent to the postmaster at Honolulu, to be held for this flight, it is estimated that the total number of covers now de posited for the flight is approaching the 100,000 mark.
Pan American’s Philatelic Section for the past three weeks has been keeping 10 clerks busy, sorting covers and prepar ing them for carriage to the foreign post offices for mailing.
Although the Post Office originally ad vised philatelists to dispatch their covers to reach the San Francisco postmaster or Pan American Airways by September 30, the date for the flight has not yet been set and covers received up to the day prior to the flight will be handled.