Suva’S New

Airport

Getting Ready For the Clippers

SUVA, Sept. 30.

TINDER the vigorous drive of a party U of Pan-American Airways execu tives, the new seaplane base at Laucala Bay—some three miles east of Suva—is taking shape. Complete arrange ments for engineering, traffic, meteoro logical and postal service are being put in hand, in a manner which indicates that the experience gained in establishing Noumea, Canton Island, Auckland, and other innumerable PAA bases has proved useful All these preparations are under the direction of Mr. Harold Gatty, PAA’s manager in New Zealand. He is staying at Government House with his wife. Mr.

P. S. Delany, South Pacific traffic man ager, and Mr. W. J. Mullahey, Suva airport manager, have been hard at work here for a week; and Mr. M. M. Thomp son, chief mechanic, will be here soon.

Out at the airport, gangs of labourers are working day and night on the con struction of landing facilities. Their main job is preparation of a 250-ton float, which will be moored some distance out in the bay, as a landing-place for the giant seaplanes.

Much remains to be done, but these busy men appear to be satisfied that all will be ready for the first Clipper when she arrives here late in October, en route to Noumea and Auckland.

It is an interesting fact that the ar rangement of two new stopping places between Honolulu and Auckland —one at Palmyra Island (see article elsewhere in this issue) and the other at Suva, to pick up Fiji traffic —will give the Clippers an additional freightage of 6,000 lbs. This is because the shorter hops allow the Clippers to carry considerably less fuel.

In pursuance of its policy of not build ing hotels at airports where reasonably suitable hotels already exist, PAA is doing nothing directly to provide accommoda tion in Suva for its passengers during the overnight stay; but, owing to the development of this new, high-class traffic, the owners of the Grand Pacific Hotel are giving the famous old building (it was built in 1914) a complete re furnishing. The general layout of the hotel will not be materially altered, but an improved hot-water system and a large number of additional baths and similar facilities are going in.

This Suva airport—which, of course, will revolutionize business and social life in the sleepy Central Pacific town — brings close to completion the original plan of the famous Tasmanian airman, Mr. Harold Gatty, for which he has worked so patiently for so many years.

But the plan is not yet complete. The PAA service stops at Auckland, and the tenacious and far-visioned Mr. Gatty will not know true happiness until the PAA Clippers are roaring into Sydney at least once each week.

Mr. Marc T. Greene, wandering Ameri can journalist, who recently passed through Sydney on his way to New Zealand, made a quick trip around the Central Pacific Islands in September and then returned to Australia early in October. Only a few days elapsed, before he embarked on a steamer at Sydney, bound for the Far East.

Mr. V. L, Dearman, of the RAAF, for merly of the C.S.R. Co., Fiji, has been reported killed in action in the Middle East.