Java-Dutch New Guinea Air
p. 20 · Read in the full issue
Service
IT was announced on January 10 that arrangements have been completed under which Royal Netherlands Indies Airways (K.N.1.L.M.) will open a flying boat service between Java and Dutch New Guinea in May next. The company has bought four flying-boats for the pur pose.
The route will be 1,500 miles in length and will include Amboina in the Celebes.
The terminal point of the new service is not mentioned; but, presumably, it will be somewhere at the western end of Dutch New Guinea—probably Merauke.
There is no settlement in the eastern end of Dutch New Guinea, adjoining the Mandated Territory and Papua—it is only partially explored.
Some day, perhaps, there will be a link between this new Dutch service, coming down from the East Indies, and Carpenter Airways, which run up from Australia to the Mandated Territory.
All the unoccupied centre of New Guinea, a gap of hundreds of miles, now lies between the Dutch settlements in Dutch and the Australian settlements in New Guinea.
The cost of the Hagen-Sepik patrol in New Guinea, between March. 1938, and June, 1939, was £11,002, which included an amount of £5,796 for aircraft ser vices. This information was given in the Commonwealth Parliament on December 7 by the Minister for Territories in reply to a question.