NEWS from one hundred years ago: LEAPING INTO THE AIR

‘An epoch-making event’ took place yesterday when the New Zealand Aero Transport Company, ‘leapt into the air’ for the first time, says the Timaru Herald. The company will be the first to offer intercity passenger services in New Zealand. Transport as a whole is being revolutionised during these postwar years. Cars, trucks and buses are quickly changing the way people get about on land. Ocean liners and cargo ships are being converted from coal power to oil. Flying seems the most futuristic of all new types of transport. The New Zealand Aero Transport Company has acquired three planes to begin its regular air service. The first, a De Havilland 9, can carry or four three passengers and caused ‘quite a stir’ yesterday as it flew over Timaru. The company is an imaginative investment by a wealthy landowning family, the Wigleys. Passengers will now be able to be ‘transported to any part of the South Island at the shortest notice and in the shortest possible time, an arrangement which will no doubt appeal to business men. In order that the Company’s machines may be known in any part of the Dominion there will be a red and yellow wave colour effect along the fusilage.’
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Timaru Herald, 16 November 1920