New Hebrides
p. 131 · Read in the full issue
Sealed Runway For Vila
Bigger Planes
Likely For
New Hebrides
The air-minded New Heb rides will probably be seeing bigger planes within the next 12 months or so, after a hard-sur face runway at Bauerfield Air
port, Vila, is completed.
A PLAN to replace the present grass surface at Bauerfield at a cost of more than $A250,000 was announced at the end of April.
The project will be financed jointly from British and French metro politan funds, and work will probably start later this year. The new run way, which will be 1,900 metres long, will have a foundation of crushed coral, and a cambered, tar-sealed surface.
At present, the largest aircraft using Bauerfield are the DC4’s of the French airline UTA, which connect Vila and Santo with Noumea twice a week, and the Herons of Fiji Air ways, which touch down at Villa and Santo four times a week between Suva and Honiara.
Air Melanesia
Bauerfield is also used by the Drovers and Dornier of the local airline, Air Melanesia. This organisa tion is a combination, for a trial period of six months, of the two local companies, New Hebrides Airways Ltd. and Societe Neo- Hebridaise de Transports Aeriens, 5A (Hebridair), which operated ndependently until June 1. New Hebrides Airways began as a charter :arrier in 1960; Hebridair began in 1964.
All round, air communications liave developed rapidly in the New Hebrides in the past few years—the number of aircraft movements last year being 70 per cent higher than in 1964.
Fourteen authorised airports have now been established in the group.
Phe latest to be opened is at Lenakel, Fanna, where more than 2,000 people from all over the island turned out for the official opening ceremony on April 4.
The British Resident Commissioner, Mr. A. M. Wilkie, said on that xcasion that the new airport would be “one of the best, if not the best” airfield in the group outside Bauer
field and Santo, if the approaches were cleared more.
Clearing the approaches would enable larger aircraft to be used.
The new airfield replaces one built at Lenakel about six years ago, which was the first commercial airfield in the New Hebrides.
Meanwhile, the people of Santo have not been happy with the ser vice provided in recent months by
Uta.
A letter signed by “a group of
Santo inhabitants,” published in the Bulletin d’lnformation of the French Residency in Vila on April 28, stated that UTA’s calls at Santo were being “systematically suppressed” and that it was “heads or tails” whether they were made or not.
Often, the airline’s DC-4 arrived in Noumea 24 hours after its DC-8 had left for France, The residents described Santo as UTA’s “pole repulsif” and said that of eight scheduled calls in January only five were made, that of nine scheduled calls in March, only seven were made, and that of seven scheduled to the third week in April only three had been made.