The Story of

The South Pacific Air Transport Council

S P A T C  
  ( commonly called  "Spats")

An episode in British Commonwealth

co-operation

 

A note for history

 

 

 


(Preferred Screen resolution 1024x768 with MSIE Print size Medium)

1. Introduction

Between 1946 and 1979 the civil aviation infrastructure covering the provision of air traffic control, communications and meteorological services necessary to support trans-pacific flights within the South West Pacific area was provided by the South Pacific Air Transport Council, popularly called “Spats” from its euphonious acronym SPATC. 

The Council  ran a staging post, the international airport at Nadi, in Fiji, which was operationally required during most of the period  1946 - 1975  in order to operate viable trans-pacific air services between North America and Australasia with the transport aircraft then available. 

The financing of the Council was not provided by the states, colonies and protected territories  in the area but by a consortium consisting of the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.

Whilst these three states were all members of the British Commonwealth of Nations, and shared a common Head of State, they were for the purposes of  the United Nations (UN), the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) and international law in general, three separate, independent sovereign states.

This paper aims to show why SPATC came into being, and how for over 30 years it was  a fine example of  multilateral  co-operation for common benefit.. It not only provided an airport of international standard  but also  essential safety services for international civil aviation in the South West Pacific region without cost to the indigenous peoples.

 

2. Early Development of civil aviation services between the United Kingdom and Australasia.

During the 18th and 19th centuries Australia and New Zealand became British Colonies and eventually in the 20th century independent sovereign states within the British Empire,  later called the British Commonwealth of Nations. Most of the population were of British stock and  strong ties with the “home” country continued to develop in the political, social and commercial fields creating a demand for good transportation between Britain and Australasia, including air travel when that began to develop in the second half of the 20th century..

2.1 The First Choice – an Asian Route

Immediately following the Great War (1914-18) British Governments, through the civil aviation branch of the Air Ministry, actively explored and encouraged the development of civil air links between the home country, Great Britain, and the countries of the British Empire, particularly India, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. The role aviation might  play in linking the British Empire together and in any future War was widely recognised.

Initially the first pioneering flights were made by pilots flying solo and were aimed at demonstrating the feasibility of actually flying the envisaged routes, rather than the carriage of passengers, mail or freight for commercial purposes. However by 1924 the British department for civil aviation began survey flights to India and Burma with a view to starting commercial air services. By 1926 these survey flights had been extended as far as Melbourne in Australia. A Civil Aviation Directorate was established as a department within the Air Ministry, the branch of the United Kingdom  government responsible for running both the Royal Air Force and the civil aviation infrastructure.

In October 1926 a British company, Imperial Airways Ltd (IAL), formed in 1924, was granted a government subsidy to establish a service between England and India. A survey flight Cairo to Karachi was carried out in October  1925. The route was slowly established sector by sector until on 30th March 1929 a through service was established between London and  Karachi, albeit at first the journey across Southern France and Italy was travelled by train, as Italy would not grant Imperial Airways permission to over fly its territory! Later in the same year this service was extended to Jodhpur and Delhi in India.

Flights were conducted  entirely in the daylight hours over relatively short sectors averaging around 500 km each and flown at an average speed of less than 150 km/hr. Flights Started early in the morning, the aircraft landed at staging posts to refuel.  Overnight both the passengers and crew stayed in a hotel.

Before the loss of the British airship (dirigible) the R101 on the 5th October 1930 an Imperial Airship Scheme had been planned to replace the land aeroplane services to link the British Empire. An airship service between Britain and India, involving only one refuelling stop in Egypt, appeared to be both  practicable and much more attractive than one using the aeroplanes.

In fact a mooring mast and a large airship hangar was constructed at Karachi ( in now named Pakistan) and the R101 was on the proving flight for such a service when it was lost.

Many people favoured airship services because they had been developed to fly long distances in relative comfort with what was then a substantial payload, whereas at this period of history viable aeroplane services could only be achieved by flying numerous short sectors in noisy uncomfortable conditions.

Nevertheless for safety reason the use of airships by Britain for civil air services was abandoned in 1931 in favour of aeroplanes. The hydrogen used as the lifting medium in British airships was an unacceptable fire and explosion risk unless considerable care was taken. Whilst the use of helium, an inert gas, would have removed this hazard the United States was the only state manufacturing it in substantial amounts  and for military reasons they were not prepared to provide it to any other country,  including both England and Germany. Germany continued the development of airship services, using hydrogen, until the loss of the  Hindenburg at New York in 1938.

On the 1st April 1931 an experimental airmail service was commenced between Australia and Britain, with Imperial Airways  flying  the western sectors and Australian aeroplanes flying the sectors east of Singapore.

 

The "Hannibal"
HP 42 Four engine civil transport plane.


Between 1931 and  September 1939 a mainstay of  IAL operations on its African routes and Middle East sectors of the route to Australia was the Handley Page 42E  transport aircraft carrying a maximum of 24 passengers. Powered by four  414  kW Bristol Jupiter XIF radial engines it had a maximum speed of  114 mph (185 km/hr)  and a cruising speed of about 87 mph (139  km/hr). The maximum range was about 500 statute miles ( 800 km) in still air.  A biplane with an upper wingspan of 130 ft (39.6 m), a length  of 92 ft (28m) and a height of 27 ft (8.3 m) the aircraft had an awe inspiring appearance, particularly as it often flew at the fairly low height of 1000 feet above the ground.  The empty weight was about 8 tonnes and the maximum take off weight  13.4 tonnes, depending on the variant. The aircraft had a large washroom and full meals were served on tables between pairs of seats. The HP42W (Heracles) variant was used on  European routes and could carry up to 38 passengers. Although only eight of these aircraft were built throughout their service they flew over a million miles without either loosing or injuring a single passenger. Their reliability and luxury did a lot to encourage air travel in the nineteen thirties when it was considered by most people to be an uncomfortable and hazardous venture.

 

The British Empire Air Route London to Sydney.

(generalised)

By December 1933 the IAL passenger service had been extended once a week to Singapore. By 1936 the journey involved around 20 enroute refuelling stops, 9 of which were used as night stopovers in a hotel. Hong Kong could be reached through a connecting service at Singapore. In January 1934 a company called Qantas Empire Airways (QEA) was established with the object of it operating the Brisbane -  Singapore sectors of the joint service through to London.

The letters QANTAS were the acronym for the:- “Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Service Ltd".

 

In December 1934 an England-Australia airmail service was commenced, which flew with about 50 refuelling stops between London and Brisbane, half operated by IAL and half by QEA. In April 1935 the service began to carry passengers  over the whole route.  Between Singapore and destinations in Australia QANTAS operated the four engine de Haviland 86 aircraft, a development of the twin engine  de Haviland "Rapide", with a maximum of ten passengers.

In 1937 IAL and QEA began to largely replace the land planes previously used with four engine Short "Empire" flying boats, specially designed for this route, these aircraft could carry 24 passengers, in considerable comfit, together with 2 tons of freight or mail over sectors of up to 1300 km and at a speed of around 250 km/hour.  Empire flying boat services began operations from near Southampton on 5th March 1937 and an "all air"  service replaced those European sectors formerly had to be travelled by train. The first service from Southampton to Sydney started the 13,000 mile (21,000 km) journey on 6th July 1938 and took ten and a half days. In 1939 the service was extended to Auckland, New Zealand, and a separate company, known  as Tasman Empire Airways Ltd (TEAL),  was formed to operate the Australia-New Zealand sector.

  A reliable and effective air service had been established between Britain and Australasia, using British manufactured aircraft and mostly operating over territory  which was either under  British suzerainty or at least “friendly”. However this idealistic situation was to be short-lived with the outbreak of war with Germany, in September 1939. Early in 1940 the British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) was formed to take over IAL operations. In June 1940 after the fall of France and the entry of Italy in to the War the sectors of the Empire route between Britain and Egypt were abandoned. To maintain essential links between South Africa, Egypt, India, Singapore and Australasia the airlines BOAC, QEA and TEAL jointly established a fortnightly flying boat  service, which followed what became known as the "Horseshoe" route, connecting Australia with India and, via Egypt, Durban in South Africa. 

With the entry of Japan into the War in December 1941, the subsequent fall of Singapore in February 1942 and the occupation of the Netherlands East Indies by Japan, the Horseshoe route service also had to be abandoned. A QEA flying boat on the service was shot down near Kupang Is on the 30th January 1942.  Commonwealth links between Australia and India were not restored until July1943 when a QEA Catalina flying boat service was established between Sydney and Karachi (now in Pakistan) via Perth, Australia, and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). The sector Perth to Ceylon, a 5800 km  over water flight, had the longest duration in flight time of any non stop commercial air service in the world. The average flight time for this sector was 27 hours and passengers experienced two sunrises. The aircraft  spent half of the flight within the range of Japanese patrol aircraft and radio silence had to be maintained.

At the end of the War in Europe in May 1945 a Liberator land plane service, operated by BOAC and QEA, was established between Britain and Australia , via the Indian Ocean. But soon after with the end of the war against Japan a flying boat service was reintroduced by QEA between Australia and Singapore, through the Netherlands East Indies (which later became Indonesia) in October 1945,  nevertheless this was soon replaced in 1946  by a land plane service, initially using Lancastrian aircraft, a civil variant of the Lancaster bomber. In December 1947  the Lancastrians, although retained for freight carriage, were replaced by Lockheed Constellation airliners on passenger services.

However whilst Commonwealth air links had been re-established in October 1945 the political situation within the Middle East, the Indian sub-continent and the Netherlands East Indies was very unstable. The new post War British Government feared that the air link between Britain and Australasia across Asia might at any time become impracticable and they therefore began to explore means for the establishment of an alternative route via North America and the Pacific, as originally envisaged before the war. But this time using land planes rather than flying boats.

 

2.2  Transpacific Routes – the alternative way from Europe to Australasia.

Typical practical routings from London to Sydney, through the Middle East, India and Singapore totalled about 21,000 km flying distance. A great circle (shortest distance) routing across the Soviet Union and via Singapore could have reduced the total distance to around 17,200 km but at the time this was both politically and operationally impracticable.  During the period between the two World wars strategists in Britain had examined the possibility of an alternative air route to Australasia across the Atlantic, Canada and the Pacific. Such a route had the attraction of being entirely across large sections of either international waters or through politically stable and friendly countries. A typical routing would have been of the order of a total distance of 21,000 km,  which was almost the same as the practicable route across Asia.

Although the Australian aviator, Sir Charles Kingsford Smith, flew the first trans-Pacific flight with a land plane, between Oakland (California), Honolulu, Fiji and Brisbane, Australia, in 1928, this was very much a one off demonstration of flight feasibility rather than the forerunner of a  practical civil air service. It was not until the mid 1930s that flying boat aircraft had been developed which could fly the long over water sectors across the Pacific with a viable payload . It should also be noted that before the Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation (Chicago, 1944) the United States would not allow the aircraft of any foreign state to use Hawaii as a staging post, thus making it impracticable for Britain to operate transpacific air services via Canada to Australasia.   In 1935 the United States airline Pan American World Airways (PAA) established a Pacific Division, and in November 1935 a PAA flying boat commenced a service between San Francisco, Honolulu and Manila in the Philippines, with stops at Midway, Wake and Guam islands. In March 1937 this airline surveyed a route from Honolulu through the South Pacific to Auckland, New Zealand, and commenced a service in December 1937 with Sikorsky flying boats, but almost immediately suspended it in January 1938 following the loss of  its "flagship" flying boat "The Samoan Clipper" near Samoa. A similar fortnightly service was not resumed until July 1940, via Honolulu, Canton Island, and Noumea (New Caledonia) to Auckland but using the larger Boeing "Clipper" class 314 flying boats.
  
On  3rd September 1939 a small flying boat facility was opened by the Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF) at Laucala Bay, Fiji, to the east of the capital, Suva, with facilities for civil use, on the same day a PAA Boeing 314 "Clipper" landed on a route survey flight between Sydney and San Francisco. Soon afterwards and again later in October 1939 an IAL Short's "Empire" flying boat flew in from Auckland., New Zealand. The  New Zealand airline TEAL, which was partially owned by BOAC, the successor to IAL, continued to fly occasional similar non scheduled operations between Auckland and Laucala Bay and in January 1942  carried the New Zealand  Deputy Prime Minister through to Honolulu. To increase payload on the PAA service stops at Palmyra Island and Laucala Bay (Fiji) were introduced on a regular basis in October 1941, but the service was terminated soon after on the 15 December 1941 following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, the "Clipper" flying boat returning to the USA via India, Africa and the Atlantic.

Laucala Bay Flying Boat Base near Suva, Fiji.

 

There is little doubt that had World War II not started in 1939 that a regular QEA and TEAL "Empire" flying boat service across  the Pacific  would have probably commenced by 1940-1. The United States would no doubt have allowed the use of Honolulu as a staging post as a quid pro quo for PAA being allowed to use Fiji enroute to Auckland. Nevertheless the British government was annoyed that the New Zealand government had allowed  PAA  into Auckland without requesting reciprocal rights through Honolulu for a British "Empire" service.

After December 1941 generally civil flying ceased in the South West Pacific, however to fight Japan the United States, Australia and New Zealand co-operated to develop a vast infrastructure of airfields, navigational aids, meteorological services and air traffic control throughout the area in support of both regional and transiting naval and military air operations.

 

In Passing  -   SW Pacific Spelling and Pronunciation - A warning.


Prior to the arrival of Europeans in the region there was no form of writing. In the first half of the 19th century Christian missionaries adapted the Roman alphabet for producing texts in the Fijian Language.


According to legend the fonts of type available contained an insufficient number of certain letters to transcribe all the Fijian sounds satisfactorily so it was decided to allocate new sounds to the Roman letters b, c, d, g and q, which might otherwise have been redundant.  Thus  for both normal and official purposes  within Fiji   :~
            B is pronounced like mb in lamb,                 G is pronounced like ng in sing
            C is pronounced like th in the,                     Q is pronounced like a "long" ng in finger.
            D is pronounced like nd in hand,
This practice is used locally for writing both personal and place names within Fiji  and in many of the other islands in the Region.


Unfortunately in the rest of the world many cartographers in preparing maps, and some writers of books, do not follow this practice but spell  words and names semi phonetically. For example :~

       Local spelling     “ Phonetic”  spelling                                                        Local spelling      “ Phonetic” spelling
        Cakobau                 Thakombau                                                                      Nadi                        Nandi   
        Beqa                        Bengga                                                                             Laucala                   Lauthala
        Labasa                     Lambasa                                                                          Pago Pago             Pango Pango           Qereqeretabua       Nggere-nggere-tambua                                                             Gavidi                     Ngavindi

       Vunibobo                Vunimbombo                                                                    Sigatoka                 Singatoka
      
 Great care should be taken when searching for South Pacific names in computer data bases, or when using search engines on the World Wide Web, to ensure that both versions are searched for.  Currently a “Google” search for “Nadi” produces about 2 million entries  whereas a “Nandi” search produces half that. Visitors to the region are warned that guidebooks and town plans frequently use the phonetic versions  whereas  the street signs are in local spelling.

 

I  remember many years ago overhearing two old American ladies who had just arrived at Nadi Airport. One said “Are we at the right Airport ? Our ticket says Nandi but that sign over there says Nadi.”  The other replied  “ I d’ont know. When we landed the pilot said ‘Nahn-dee’ .”
       

 

 

Once the War against Japan was won the United States government indicated that they would be withdrawing all their forces  from the region during 1946. Whilst most of the airfields and facilities were still under United States control PAA recommenced a civil air service between  San Francisco and Auckland, New Zealand, via Honolulu, Canton Island and Nadi, Fiji, on  the 6th June 1946 using  DC4 .land planes The British government had granted a United States airline operating rights through Nadi, Fiji,  under the terms of  the general bilateral air service agreement signed in Bermuda in February 1946 between the two countries. On this first flight the elapsed time for the flight from San Francisco to Nadi Airport, Fiji, was 33 hours and  40 minutes. The DC4 aircraft used carried only 16 passengers but a crew of 11. On the first flight the aircraft  briefly visited Nausori Airport near Suva so it could be seen by  people from the capital.

 

The Roots of Nadi Airport, Fiji.


In April 1939  with the participation of the United States a British Commonwealth Defence Conference was held in Wellington, New Zealand, at which it was clearly identified that the most likely enemy in the area would be Japan.  Since 1924  the United States military  had generally assumed that in the event of war in the Pacific  that they would fight Japan and  that it would primarily be a Naval war, however with the development of larger and longer range bomber aircraft this strategy had been revised. The 1939 Wellington conference decided that in the interest of  Commonwealth defence in the South Pacific that New Zealand should construct two airfields in Fiji and in August 1939 the New Zealand cabinet approved funds for this purpose.  Immediately the Fiji Colonial Secretary made arrangements to acquire land for one of the airfields at Namaka near the township of Nadi on the west coast of the island of Viti Levu, and the other on the east coast at Nausori about 15 miles from the capital, Suva.

The Nadi area was selected because it was relatively flat, with much better prevailing weather conditions for flying than those experienced near Suva, on the east side of  Viti Levu. The  occurrence of either poor visibility or low cloud was very rare at Nadi. Rainfall was considerably less both in amount and frequency than in the Suva area and there was usually a consistently long and pronounced "dry" season. On the other hand for about half the year  Suva could experience prolonged rainfall and large amounts of low cloud in the wet season.

The construction of a small grass air base suitable for use by DH-89 (Rapide) aircraft was completed at Nadi  by March 1941. However when the airfield was still under construction "Unit 20" of the RNZAF, consisting of four aircraft, arrived in November 1940. Inter alia "Unit 20" flew patrols to Tonga and the New Hebrides.  It eventually became No.4 General Reconnaissance Squadron of the RNZAF.

In October 1941 at the request of General Douglas Macarthur, US commander in the Philippines, the US War Department directed that airfields should be constructed in the South Pacific to enable  B17 bombers to be ferried to the Philippines avoiding the Japanese mandated territories in the West Pacific, this was two months before the Japanese attack on Pearl harbour.

 

About 35 B17 aircraft were already at Clarke Field, the main USAAF air base in the Philippines..  Mr. Leif  "Jack" Sverdrup  of the  civil engineering firm of  Sverdrup and Parcel, St Louis, USA, who  later became a Major General in the US Army, was asked to carry out a survey for such a route.  After visiting Honolulu and a number of islands in the South Pacific, including Fiji,  he then attended a British Commonwealth Defence meeting in Wellington, New Zealand, in November 1941, at which he agreed that the US would finance the construction  of two 7000 foot long runways at Nadi, Fiji, by a New Zealand firm, the Southern Cross Construction Company, for NZ pounds 250,000 (then about USD one million) , the work to be completed quickly by April 1942 so that it could be used for the ferry flights.  The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour  forced the contractors to redouble their efforts. Clark Field, the main USAAF bomber base in the Philippines,  fell to the Japanese on the 29th December 1941. Nevertheless between the 3rd and 12th of January 1942 three Boeing B17 Flying Fortresses completed a trip from Hawaii  to Townsville , Australia,  via  Canton Island, Nadi and Tontouta,  in  Free French New Caledonia. The aircraft never made it to Clark Field but were  briefly based in Java.

 The B17s landed at Nadi on 10th January 1942, just over a month following  the attack on Pearl Harbour.  A day which  marks  Nadi's emergence as an international airport. Soon afterwards Nadi  was completely taken over  by the US Military Air Transport Service as their main base in the SW Pacific until nearly five years later on  the 19th December 1946  it was handed over to representatives of the New Zealand Department of Civil Aviation, acting on behalf of SPATC. The colonial administration of Fiji was scarcely involved.  From 1947 onwards although still a legal part of Fiji the airport area became a defacto enclave administered by the New Zealand DCA.

 

3. Post War  - The Wellington  Commonwealth Aviation Conference, 1946.

3.1. Roots


In November 1944 during the Chicago Conference on International Civil Aviation the British, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand delegates had briefly discussed the possibility  of establishing a joint air service across the Pacific between North America and Australasia in competition with any service started by American operators. The United Kingdom was particular interested in promoting the use of British manufactured aircraft for this purpose. Whilst the general outcome of the conference was that after the war airlines would be mainly nationally run, either by companies or the state, the Chicago Convention specifically  recognized the right of several states to establish joint operating companies, although eventually the only significant one ever formed was SAS - the Scandinavian Airline System.  To further the joint airline objective and to establish a civil ground infrastructure in the South West Pacific to replace that currently being provided by the United States forces, late in 1945 the United Kingdom Minister for Civil Aviation in the new Labour government, Lord Winster, proposed  that a British Commonwealth Conference should be held in Wellington, New Zealand, on 28th February 1946.

The British government considered the matter so important that a Sunderland III flying boat was chartered from the British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) to carry the Minister and his advisers the 20,000 kilometre journey from England to New Zealand.

The United Kingdom and Australia were represented by their respective ministers for civil aviation, Lord Winster and the Hon. Arthur S.Drakeford, New Zealand by its Acting Prime Minister and the Western Pacific High Commission, including Fiji,  by the Governor of Fiji. The Government of Canada only sent an observer and never actively participated.

The conclusions of the conference were presented in the form of recommendations to the governments of the participating countries, and were couched in very broad and general terms.  The first was that  there should be established a "South Pacific Air Transport Council"  (SPATC), to review and promote the progress and development of civil air communications in the South Pacific, and the second that there should be established a company, owned by the three major countries involved, to be known as "British Commonwealth Pacific Airlines" (BCPA ), to operate air services between North America and Australasia.

3.2 SPATC
The membership of the  Council was to be  the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and the Western Pacific High Commission ( a body representing other British colonies and protectorates in the area.). Canada was to be invited to join but in fact never did.

Two standing committees of the Council were to be formed to study and recommend the personnel and equipment required to implement the communications, ground services and the meteorological infrastructure required for the main trunk and regional air routes in the South (West) Pacific. New Zealand was delegated to approach the United States authorities for the purchase of  existing equipment and facilities in the area and in particular that at Nadi, Fiji

In general it was agreed that New Zealand, and to a lesser extent Australia, would provide personnel to man the aerodromes and other facilities and that New Zealand  would keep accounts of the total expenditure and revenue involved. It was also agreed that the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand would however continue to meet the cost of any civil aviation services provide for domestic purposes within any of their national, dependent or protected territories. Nevertheless otherwise the countries providing personnel and services, principally New Zealand, would debit the joint account with their cost, and the total expenditure, capital and operating, less any revenue would then be recouped from the participating parties in agreed proportions. The services provided by territories in the SW Pacific which were under the control of France or the USA were not covered by the Wellington agreement and  did not participate in these arrangements, although they benefited from them. For most, but not precisely all, of the period of the Council's  existence up to the early 1970s the cost of running SPATC was shared in the following  proportions :

 

Country

Operating Expense

Capital

United Kingdom

46 2/3  %

40%

Australia

33 1/3 %

40%

New Zealand

20%

20%

 

 

 

 

A constitution for SPATC  appeared as an Appendix to the agreement signed by the Ministers at Wellington, in 1946, which was couched in very broad and "woolly"  terms. It was more of a gentlemen's agreement on intent than a formal agreement subject to governmental ratification.

 The functions of the Council were broadly to be:

 

·      (1) To keep under review and to promote the progress of civil aviation in the South Pacific.

·       (2) To serve as a medium for an exchange of views between member countries on civil air transport.

·       (3)  To advise member  governments on the policy of operation, development and finance of air services,
 operated or controlled jointly by the Governments of the United Kingdom, Australia and New      Zealand,  on the regional, trans-Tasman and trans-Pacific routes.

·       (4)   To carry out functions regarding air services in the Pacific  area which may be delegated by the  Governments.

·      (5)   To consider and advise on such civil aviation matters as may be referred to it by any member Government.

·       (6)   To maintain liaison and to co-operate with the Commonwealth Air Transport Council and similar bodies.

 

This constitution was later amended on several occasions. Initially it was suggested that the Council, consisting of the Ministers or their representatives should meet at least twice a year, but in practice the Council met annually until 1961 and then about every 3 years. The first council meeting was held in Canberra in December 1946 and the second in Canberra in August 1947.  However the third was held in Melbourne in November 1947., where the headquarters of the Australian Department of Civil Aviation was based. The fourth meeting was held in Wellington, New Zealand, November 1948.  Further meetings were held in Australia or New Zealand, but eventually after 1960 all were held in Fiji. After the first meeting the practice was for the country representatives to be senior civil servants, who were accompanied by technical advisers and others  who sat on the various working committees. Specialized committees frequently  met between council meetings, and the Finance committee always met every year. Although discussion and debate took place in council and committee meetings the general practice was to reach conclusions and make recommendations through consensus rather than by formal voting. The Council was dissolved  following its 22nd meeting in December 1978.  There had been 22 full meetings of the council, plus numerous meetings of its specialised sub committees, in the 32 years of its existence.

The Secretariat of SPATC was provided by Australia. Each member state who contributed any services or equipment had to give a full and detailed account thereof which was then incorporated in to consolidated accounts, prepared by New Zealand, from which the contribution to be made by each member state was determined. New Zealand maintained a bank account for SPATC in Fiji. Each member state was responsible for meeting the pay and expenses of their representatives attending  meetings of the council or its committees.

3.2. British Commonwealth Pacific Airlines


This paper is concerned  with the story of SPATC but at the time  the Wellington Conference took place the more important matter for the participants was  probably the formation of  the joint airline undertaking, “British Commonwealth Pacific Airlines”, to operate air services across the Pacific in competition with Pan American World Airways, which was poised to recommence flying the Pacific route by mid 1946.  The BCPA story in brief is that  the company was incorporated in Australia and began  a transpacific service between Sydney-Nandi-Canton Island-Honolulu-San Francisco-Vancouver with DC4 aircraft chartered from  Australian National Airlines, on  the 16th September 1946. In January 1949 DC6 aircraft were introduced, the first pressurised airliner to operate scheduled services in the South Pacific. However in October 1953  the British government withdrew the BOAC shareholding in BCAPA. On 17th March 1954 it was agreed that QANTAS would take over BCAPA operations on the transpacific route, which they did soon after on the 15th May, using Constellation aircraft. BCPA ceased flying but the company was not formally dissolved until several years later due to on going litigation which had followed an accident at San Francisco in 1953.

 

Text Box: Tourism development in the South Pacific The spread of European colonies in the South Pacific during the 19th century lead to a growing interest in the area as a place to visit. Although many popular novels were written describing sun drenched mysterious islands with dusky maidens and an idyllic way of life the actual number of visitors to the area was quite insignificant. Most of the islands were inaccessible. A few cruises were undertaken by relatively wealthy dedicated tourists, such as that by Robert Louis Stevenson in a chartered yacht. Most visits were generally limited to passengers breaking a transpacific steamer crossing for a few days in Fiji. Granted some more intrepid travellers strayed further afield, but the travelling was so difficult they were few in number. Overall none of these visitors had any significant effect on the economies and cultures of the various islands. This situation did not change significantly until the Second World War. Immediately after the war the transpacific airline services which developed were slow, tiring and very expensive. Nevertheless some passengers soon decided to break the south bound journey from Honolulu for a short stopover in Fiji prior to the eight hour flight to Sydney. As a result a few hotels were developed during the fifties along the west and south coasts of Viti Levu, the main island in the Fiji group. By the end of the fifties about 10,000 passengers a year (200 a week), were disembarking at Nadi airport. Air travel was beginning to bring a small but significant number of tourists to Fiji. The last years of the fifties however saw a major change in world air travel, the introduction of the four engine long range jet air transport. Both PAA and QANTAS realised the impact these aircraft could have on transpacific travel and decided to introduce them on to this routes as soon as practicable. Not only was the journey time less than half that in piston engine aircraft but the cabin service and passenger comfit could be vastly improved. Operating cost per seat mile was also substantially reduced and the aircraft capacity twice as much. Suddenly at the beginning of the sixties a dedicated journey to Fiji , from either Australia, New Zealand or North America became a practicable and viable proposition. SPATC developed Nadi Airport to take the new aircraft, the first in the region capable of doing so. During the sixties the number of visitors to Fiji grew significantly, from 14,700 in 1961 to 186,000 in 1973, an annual growth rate of nearly 25%. Throughout the decade many new tourist hotels and guest house were rapidly built, mostly along the south and west coast of Viti Levu but a few elsewhere. Just after the War the choice of Nadi, Fiji, as the staging post for transpacific air services was by no means a foregone conclusion . Any one of the other airfields in the area, constructed during the war, such as Tontouta in New Caledonia, Faleolo in Western Samoa, Pago Pago in American Samoa and Fua’amotu in Tonga could have been operationally developed as the major airport in the region instead of Nadi. At the time the eventual benefits and consequences of the presence of a large international airport were by no means foreseen, to many it seemed a liability which could cost a lot to run yet generate little revenue. It was tolerated in Fiji because the members of SPATC were meeting the shortfall in revenue against expense. Until 1960 the small tourist industry which had grown around Nadi had little or no significance to the Fiji islands’ economy. The sugar, and to a lesser extent copra, industries were the colony’s main earners of foreign currency, however by the early seventies this had all changed and tourism had replaced them as such. As far as sea transport was concerned all the transpacific passenger liner services had virtually ceased by the late 1960’s. By 1974 98% of all visitors to the Fiji Islands came by air. Although a few cruise liners continued to make short visits of around a couple of days duration, the passengers eating and sleeping on board. By the seventies, when Fiji became independent, the Airlines using it and the airport at Nadi had become the most important factors in the social and economic development of the country. Tourism was replacing Copra and Sugar as the countries main sources of foreign currency. However many local politicians and administrators in the newly independent state were slow to fully appreciate the significance aviation was going to play in the future, and in particular the sensitivity of tourism to political stability.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


4. The role of SPATC

4.1. Immediate Post war development at Nadi, Fiji.

4.1.1. After the 1939-45 War none of the territories in the area were independent sovereign states. Under international law it was the responsibility of  the suzerain or protecting states to provide any of the ground based infrastructure required under the terms of the Convention on International Civil Aviation, Chicago, 1944.

Initially in was agreed by SPATC that the main staging post for transpacific services would be the airfield at Nadi, nevertheless the possible later use of another airfield in the area instead of Nadi was not rejected but left open pending further investigation. Several other island administrations had shown an interest in hosting a regional international airport but none appeared to have either a suitable infrastructure or adequately developed site. The colonial administration  and business community in Fiji expressed the wish that the international air port should be close to the colony’s capital, Suva. Nadi was about 200  km distance from Suva and the road was unpaved. The journey by car was uncomfortable, relatively dangerous and could take over six hours. The airport at Nausori, 14 miles to the north east of Suva, which was the second one constructed in 1940, had a proclivity for flooding and during the "wet" season frequently suffered from low cloud and poor visibility due to continuous rain. Civil aviation experts considered it quite unsuitable for development for use for long range intercontinental scheduled services. 

4.1.2. During the war the United States had offered to build a highway across the centre of the island of Viti Levu, directly connecting Nadi with Suva, but for several reasons, mainly social and environmental, the idea was never  proceeded with.  It must be remembered that at this time the general opinion by the few interested in  tourism was that development would be best served by building "luxury" type hotels in the Suva area. The unattractiveness of that area to tourists, arising from the marked "wet" season and the fact that there was not a decent beach within 50 km of Suva, did not seem to have been sufficiently appreciated. That eventually thousands of tourists would be seeking the sun and sand along the undeveloped West coast of Viti Levu was certainly not envisaged.

In the immediate post war phase the business and government air passenger potential of the Suva area was in fact quite small and insufficient in itself to generate any international air services. In the fifties even Nadi was mainly just a  "technical stopover", for refuelling. Although the nucleus of a tourist stopover was slowly developing due to some  travellers  enroute to Australia stopping over for a few days to  recuperate from the arduous transpacific flight in piston engine aircraft.

4.1.3. Nevertheless in February 1948 a special committee of SPATC,  headed by Sir Frederick Tymms, the last British Director General of Civil Aviation in India, and including Dr.K N E (“Bill”) Bradfield of Australia,  after investigating four sites including one in Tonga, recommended that a new civil airport should be constructed  at Suva Point. This recommendation was later rejected by the SPATC and Nadi remained the main international airport in the region, which was a good thing in the light of the way the  tourist industry developed within Fiji in the sixties.

 

The Fiji Island Group and prior to 1970, British Colony of Fiji.

 

4.2. The development of Nadi airport and other SPATC services.


4.2.1. Not only was Nadi airport to be a vital staging post on the transpacific air route but it was to be the centre for the Air Traffic Control, Communications, Search and Rescue and Meteorological infrastructure proposed by the International Civil Aviation Organization for an area of about five million square miles in the SW Pacific. Whilst much basic equipment had been either left, given or sold by the United States forces when they departed from the region there were no suitably qualified local people left who were able to operate it. Initially the necessary air traffic controllers, meteorologists, technicians, and communication operators had to be provided by  New Zealand, although from time to time they were supplemented by a few from the UK and Australia.

 From 1946 onwards the number of New Zealand personnel at Nadi slowly grew reaching a peak of around  100 in the early 1960s, but falling to 69 by 1970, following some localisation of posts. In addition to the airport infrastructure meteorological, communications and air traffic control services were established to meet the ICAO requirements of a regional Air Traffic Control Centre.

Telecommunications costs were especially high as there was practically no suitable public service and both transmitting and receiving complexes, including several extensive high frequency directional aerial "farms", had to be constructed to communicate on the aeronautical fixed telecommunications network with other countries.  Nadi  was directly connected, on a full time basis,  by radio teletype links with other regions on both sides of the Pacific Ocean. The communications centre at Nadi included  message relaying and routing equipment to other airfields in the South Pacific. The senior NZ technical and administrative staff also functioned as a South West Pacific regional division of the NZ DCA, responsible for the civil aviation infrastructure in other NZ administered territories in the region such as Western Samoa, Niue and the Cook Islands.

Too many officers of both the Australian and New Zealand Departments of Civil Aviation played an important role in both the running and planning of Nadi Airport to mention them all individually. Nevertheless  particularly outstanding contributions were made for many years by Dr  K N E (“Bill”) Bradfield, First Assistant Director General of Civil Aviation, Australia, and Lewis F P Taylor Director of Civil Aviation (1968-72), New Zealand.

4.2.2. In most cases technical and administrative personnel were accompanied by their wives and families and  housing was constructed to New Zealand standards to  accommodate them, in all making a community of between three and four hundred expatriates living in a complex within the airport boundary. The amenities included an elementary level school, a social club and a nine hole golf course, all supported financially from the SPATC joint account. It is topical  to note that Vijay Singh , the world champion golfer first learned to play on this golf course. The airport had its own oil fuelled electrical  power station, drainage and water supply. In addition to the SPATC accommodation most of the airlines operating through  Nadi decided to build permanent accommodation to house their own personnel and families, there was nothing suitable locally to either buy or rent. The area of Nadi Airport became a veritable expatriate enclave within Fiji, largely under de-facto New Zealand DCA administration although de jure subject to Fiji Laws.

4.2.3. Early in the fifties the Nadi Flight Information Region became one of the first in the world to use the  Selcal  HF Radio Telephone communications coding system, the introduction was made in collaboration  between SPATC and PAA World Airways. This enhanced safety as aircrew no longer had to maintain a continuous listening radio watch. It was eventually used throughout the world.

4.2.4. Between 1957 and 1959 Nadi Airport was extensively developed by SPATC to take the four engine jet aircraft, such as the Boeing 707 and Douglas DC8, which had been planned to replaced piston engine aircraft on long routes by the end of the decade. This involved both lengthening the main runway and building a new terminal complex with air bridges. The new air services  provided the stimulus for the development of the Fiji Tourist Industry which grew very rapidly during the sixties.  Nadi was the first airport in the region which had the capability of handling these larger aircraft.            .

4.2.5. Initially the only airport service to become largely manned by local employees was the Airport Fire and Rescue Service, although until the  mid sixties even this was officered by New Zealand personnel.  In 1960 no local residents were employed in either the Air Traffic Control or the Telecommunications services, neither in operational nor engineering roles.  In the late fifties a small number of  young local citizens had been selected and sent for specialized training with the civil aviation departments in Australia and New Zealand. However the progress in their training appeared to be  too slow and the number  insufficient to achieve complete localization of all posts at Nadi within the foreseeable future. This was of particular concern to the British governments in the sixties as in the political field rapid progress was being made for Fiji to move from being a colonial dependency to an independent self governing state.


4.2.6. Fiji eventually became a sovereign independent state on the 10th October 1970, with Dominion status within the British Commonwealth of Nations and the Queen of England as nominal Head of State. However Nadi Airport and all its regional technical services continued to be run and administered by New Zealand, for and on behalf of the SPATC who were still de facto the airport's owner and operator.

 

The Trans Pacific Air Route in relation to The South West Pacific


4[MV1] .3. The growth of the Post War Civil Aviation Infrastructure in Fiji


4.3.1 A lot of the countries of the British Commonwealth benefited from World War II  in that many of their citizens received military training in  the various trades engaged in aviation. When peace came these  people provided a vast pool of trained pilots, engineers and  technical personnel  from which to recruit people to work in post war civil aviation. This was not so in the case of Fiji. In 1941 only five Fiji residents, all of European origin, were recruited to serve in the UK Royal Air Force. Two became pilots. However after the war they all returned  to their civilian occupations and none ever worked in civil aviation. Apart from these five people no Fiji residents, either of Fijian, European or Indian race, apart from a few who worked in semiskilled jobs at the USAAF bases,  received training in any aspect which would have made them suitable for employment within civil aviation after the war in the colony. The situation was similar in most colonial territories in the SW Pacific.

4.3.2. In 1945 Harold Gatty, the famous Australian aviator and navigation specialist, who had served in United States military aviation during the war as a Colonel, settled in Fiji and bought Katafaga Estates. He was appointed by PAA as their local agent. Very vociferous on civil aviation matters within the colony he founded a small local airline, Fiji Airways, in July 1951. He was also appointed by the Governor to the Legislative Council where he was very much the leading aviation expert. However he died in 1957 and Fiji Airways was purchased by QEA. In January 1960 the company was jointly acquired by QEA, BOAC and TEAL with the participation of Fiji and the Western Pacific High Commission as minority shareholders. Initially it only operated  domestic services but it soon began to operate between Fiji and other territories in the region. An operational and maintenance base was established at Nausori Airport, near Suva. In 1971 the company was renamed Air Pacific to reflect its developing role as a regional carrier. By the end of the century it had become both a transpacific carrier and the most significant regional carrier within the South West Pacific, but its base had been moved from Nausori to Nadi.

4.3.2 There was no officer in the Fiji Colonial administration specifically appointed to deal with civil aviation matters  until 1957 when an Operations Officer, Roy Worthing, was seconded, through the Colonial Office, from the United Kingdom ministry for civil aviation for a period of three years as 'Superintendent of Civil Aviation'. He was however only responsible for domestic civil aviation matters and had nothing to do with the country's main airport, Nadi. In 1960 Roy Worthing was replaced by George Smith, from the UK's Colonial Civil Aviation Service, a branch of the Colonial Office in London, and the post expanded to become that of  'Controller of Transport and Civil Aviation', a department which included responsibility for road transport matters and dog licensing ! An expatriate civil aviation assistant was recruited but the staffing was minimal. The domestic airport at Nausori, and other small airports, were operated and staffed by International Air Radio, a British company, under contract arrangements 


4.3.3. In 1965 James Verran, an Operations Officer from the United Kingdom Ministry of Aviation, who was of New Zealand origin, was seconded to the Colonial Office to fill the post of Controller. He had travelled to England in 1939 and joined the RAF. He had a distinguished career as a pilot, reaching the rank of Squadron Leader and winning the DFC and bar on operations with Bomber Command before being shot down and taken a prisoner by the Germans in 1943.   Fiji ceased to be a British Colony on the 10th October 1970 and became an independent sovereign state within the British Commonwealth of Nations. However James Verran continued to fill the post of Controller on secondment terms from the UK government until 1974.  Although James Verran participated in meetings of the SPATC, and its committees, he did not have any responsibility for either administering or running Nadi Airport, which remained under the control of the NZDCA, through SPATC arrangements, until mid 1975.


4.3.4. Slowly but surely the need for the continuation  of SPATC became questionable. Nevertheless after Fiji became an independent state in 1970 the elected government  showed great reluctance  to taking over Nadi airport as it  appeared to them that it might be a financial liability because its operation  since 1946 had been heavily subsidized by the UK, NZ and Australia governments.  It appeared to the government that a large portion of  the costs incurred at Nadi were for the provision of  air traffic and telecommunications services to international civil aviation transiting  Nadi Airport or flying within the South West Pacific  area, at the time  around 8 million square kilometres mostly over international waters. Many of these services  had arisen because the member states of SPATC had undertaken  to provide them through obligations entered in to by the United Kingdom at meetings of the International Civil Aviation Organisation  (ICAO)  during the fifties and sixties. To most taking on  this burden of responsibility and cost by a small, new and relatively poor state  seemed both  unacceptable and unfair. It must be appreciated that Fiji had a population of only just over half a million inhabitants and the running costs of Nadi airport could easily become a significant debit item in the budget.

Some Observations on World attitudes towards the financing of the Civil Aviation Infrastructure

 

In the years following the War it had been widely accepted that governments should provide both the services and facilities to develop civil aviation and that the cost thereof should be recovered though general taxation. .  During the sixties and seventies some states  began to take a different attitude towards the recovery of the cost of providing airports and safety services for civil aviation. By 1970 the principle that civil aviation was a purely commercial activity had been widely  accepted, and that as such it was more appropriate that all the costs of operations should be recovered from the airlines that used these services rather than from general  taxation. Many considered that ultimately the airline passengers or freight shippers should pay  for these services in the price of their ticket or the freight charge.

At this point it is interesting to note that in the USA before 1970 the cost of  airports and infrastructure  was mainly being financed from the general funds of the US Treasury. However following the Airport and Airway Development Act of 1970 funding has been in the form of grants from a government “Aviation Trust Fund” which gets its money from a federal ExciseTax, which has recently been around 8%-9% on the cost of domestic passenger tickets and cargo bills. By the year 2001 this fund stood at the vast amount of 15 billion US dollars. In the USA de facto, but indirectly, the air passengers and shippers of cargo  are paying for the services provided to them, not the general tax payer. Many US citizens seem to be unaware that they pay this tax when they fly  as airline tickets are offered and paid for inclusive of tax. This method of raising funds for civil aviation is possible  in a country with a large domestic market but ceases to work satisfactorily when international traffic  predominates. Consequently in many countries the civil aviation infrastructure has to derive its revenue from  landing fees, passenger “tax” and in more recent years overflight (enroute) charges, some levied directly on the airlines rather than the passengers. The airline being left to recover the cost from the passenger. In addition considerable income is often obtained from duty free sales and other concessions.

 In examining the recovery of airport running costs, particularly at international airports with  relatively  few aircraft landing and taking off each day, such as Nadi,  it has to be appreciated that the staffing and size of the technical and safety services which have to be  provided  depends more on the aircraft size and the type of operation than the number  of  aircraft movements. As a consequence the less the amount traffic the higher must be the charge for each separate landing and take off if costs are to be recovered. .   This principle generally applies to recovering the cost of  providing airport lighting, navigational aids, fire and rescue services and air traffic control.

 
                            

 

  

 

 

 

 

   
















 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5. The winding up of SPATC.


5.1. With the granting of independence to Fiji on 10th October 1970 it had become increasingly apparent to all the member states of SPATC, and in particular the United Kingdom, that the continuation of the control and administration of Nadi airport by the New Zealand Department of Civil Aviation was an anachronism. For some years the running  of Nadi airport had been the Council’s principle expense and responsibility, and although they also paid for some meteorological and communications facilities in other island territories the total cost of these was relatively small in comparison.. Nevertheless  there were insufficient competently trained local staff, particularly with management skills,  for Fiji to take on all the work involved  without substantial expatriate technical assistance. The Council pressed for an increase in the number local trainees, particularly in the fields of air traffic control and  radio equipment maintenance and this task was undertaken by the New Zealand DCA, but charged to SPATC.  At the same time the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand began to back out from supporting any new capital expenditure at Nadi, and indicated to the Fiji Government that they expected Nadi airport operation to become financially self sufficient in the foreseeable future.

Within the new independent government of Fiji little was known about the various requirements and responsibilities associated with the provision of civil air services. In addition as Fiji is a relatively small state  each ministry had to cover several different portfolios, and thecomplexities involved were difficult for one man to deal with.  The first Minister responsible for civil aviation matters from 1970 to 1972, the Hon.(later Sir) Charles Stinson appreciated his limited of knowledge of aviation so seriously that he bought his own aircraft and obtained a private pilot’s licence. His successor was Sir Penaia Ganilau (later the first President of the Republic of Fiji) who in addition was deputy prime minister, his portfolio of duties was however  extensive and  the Hon.Edward J Beddoes was appointed as Assistant Minister, and mainly dealt with civil aviation matters until 1977, when the Hon Jonati Mavoa  briefly became the Minister responsible for civil aviation. The next Minister was Hon Tomasi  Vakatora, who had four years previously as a civil servant been Permanent Secretary in the same Ministry.  He  was largely responsible at the political level for the smooth transition of the civil aviation infrastructure from control by SPATC to the establishment of a Civil Aviation Authority of Fiji, an independent statutory body. The Hon.Edward Beddoes  later became Minister.

 During most of the above mentioned  periods of  tenure the executive link between the Ministers and the Director of Civil Aviation, and later the