You Fan As

In Air-Minded Fiji:

You Fly

i NICE domestic touch in Fiji Airways planes is a woven native fan which is provided for each customer. As these planes rarely fly above 3,000 or 4.000 feet they are appreciated.

New Guinea would not know the Drovers which FA acquired from that Territory last year; they have been fitted with seats and although some passengers may suffer from acute claustrophobia, particularly when they have just transferred from a Super Constellation, a Stratocruiser or a more humble DC6, having any seat at all is a vast im provement to sitting among the poultry, tractors and rice, or even on the tin seats that were customary in operations in New Guinea.

Modification of the propellers for Fiji flying appears to have cut something off their New Guinea speed. It is now about 115 miles per hour. That may be illusory, however, as the Drovers when used in New Guinea usually were on routes which required them to flutter about among 13,000 ft. peaks.

Now that virtually all international air traffic goes through Nadi, instead of Suva, the planes of Fiji Airways are doing an excellent job in ferry ing passengers between Nadi and Nausori—the latter a 40-minutes’ bus ride from Suva, But the small planes are doing an equally excel lent job for local communications.

Fiji is now air-minded—a decided change from the attitude of 3 h yf : ai *s ago when the inauguration of the first FA services were

accepted with scepticism by many local residents.

ONE of the crazy things in the set-up, of course, is the fact that the Government has not been far-sighted enough t(D put an airfield closer to Suva, which must continue to be the hub of all local Fiji air communications, from tne time of presenting oneself for em barkation at Nadi to arrival at one s hotel in Suva, three hours can easily elapse, although only one hour may be taken up in actual flight.

Whoever was responsible for veto ing the idea of an air strip at Suva Point will be cursed by yet unborn generations of citizens who now seem eternally doomed to the long trek 'to and from Nauson.

Even if a full-scale international strip were not possible, one capable of taking the light planes used here would still have been a great asset to the whole Colony.

Mr. Harold Gatty, owner of Fiji Airways, was in Australia in late February negotiating for the pur chase of another Drover.

As You Pray, Too

Native fans are provided also in the Cathedral in Suva. And this, incidentally, is the only church I have ever visited where European women go hatless. I have always imagined that this hat business was in the same class as the laws of the Medes and Persians.

It just shows what can be done in a hot country when common

sense is permitted to operate.-

JT.