Civil Aviation in New Zealand - An Illustrated History

Reed, 1975. Dustwrapper faded on spine and has staining to edges. End pages have stains from old cover. Some foxing to contents, particularly to prelims. Binding tight.

Why should this small and then remote country have taken such a precocious interest in aviation? Richard Pearse of South Canterbury was in the air before the Wright brothers, and the Walsh brothers of Auckland were world pioneers in flying-boat design, construction and operation. In the 1920s, successive airmail services failed only through governmental shortsightedness and pigheadedness, but in the 1930s airline and airmail services were developing as soundly and as rapidly as anywhere else in the world. Rendel traces New Zealand's civil aviation through the pioneer era and the years of official apathy, and goes on to outline the rise of the national airlines; N.A.C., Safe Air and Air New Zealand, and that of private companies such as Mount Cook Airlines and Aerial Mapping Ltd. He shows how and why New Zealand now leads the world in agricultural aviation, and has developed a light-aircraft manufacturing industry that has won international contracts against fierce northern hemishere competition...