Coral Route
p. 20 · Read in the full issue
More Trouble on Coral Route
T'ASMAN Empire Airways
Coral Route service received
another set-back early in April
due to breakdown in navigational
facilities in Western Samoa.
It came at a time when TEAL was getting its Fiji-Tahiti Coral Route Service reorganised following the recent grounding of the Mk.IV Solent aircraft.
On April 5, it was announced from Auckland that the Satapuala- Faleolo airport on Upolu, Western Samoa —the airport for Apia—was closed forthwith, and would probably remain so for the next six or eight weeks due to a breakdown of radio navigational facilities there. The Coral Route Service, Suva-Aitutaki- Papeete will continue —that is, TEAL will over-fly Satapuala.
The Solent Mk.lV’s used on the service had been grounded in late February after the discovery of a fault in the wings of a similar type of aircraft of about the same age in England, due to fatigue.
Pending the preparation of an earlier-type Mk.III Solent, which carries a smaller pay-load and which had been held in reserve in Auck land, TEAL hired a Qantas Sand ringham to make several flights on the Coral Route. The Mk.III was in service and the Mk.lV’s were ex pected back within a few weeks, when the April 5 announcement came.
The interruption is serious for Pacific communications generally, and particularly coming as it does when the tourist season is due to begin. fl Colonel and Mrs. H. T. Allan, formerly of New Guinea, and now of Mullaway, Woolgoolga, NSW, are booked to sail from Sydney on a leisurely world tour, via the Far East, at the end of May. They will be in Europe in August and September.
Colonel Allan has made a good re covery from the illness which over took him in February.