Pacific Service in April

Aorangi Returns to Pacific Service in April

TH E Canadian - Australasian liner Aorangi will resume its service be tween Australasia and North America in early April. The governments of Aus tralia, Canada and New Zealand will subsidise its operations. The vessel was withdrawn from service at the end of January and laid up in Sydney. The owners intended to sell it.

The owners announced last July that their losses since the liner had resumed on the Pacific route in 1948, after war service, were so great that they could no longer maintain the service unless they were heavily subsidised by the Govern ments of Australia, New Zealand and Canada. They gave January 26, 1951 as the deadline.

Months of negotiation followed. New Zealand was willing to pay her share of the subsidy; but Australia and Canada were not. Australia later signified that she was willing but Canada refused until recent war fears changed the situation somewhat.

About four regular passenger ships were on the Sydney-Auckland-North America run before the war, but only the Aorangi came back after the war ended. Between August, 1948, and January, 1951, she lost £600,000 for her owners. Aorangi’s losses can be attributed to airline competition, high working costs and dockside unrest, but mostly to dollar restrictions imposed by the Governments of Australia and New Zealand, which has cut virtually off trade with North America. ris understood that the subsidy will be paid for the year 1951 only and then reviewed. In the light of the present international situation, as well as for reasons of trade and communication, the decision to keep the Aorangi in service has been received with pleasure on both sides of the Pacific and in the Islands.

The Melbourne Herald of January 23 summed up the situation neatly in a leader, part of which said: “It was obviously wise of the Govern ments concerned to agree on this last minute salvaging of the ‘all-red route.’

It would be wiser still for them to study means of restoring the buoyant, two-way flow of commerce that used to exist.”