Office of the Historian

847.7961/31: Telegram

The Consul General at Sydney (Moffat) to the Secretary of State

Sydney, December 21, 1935—11 a.m.
[Received December 24—7 p.m.]

The following is a short summary of a formal note dated December 16th just received from the Minister of External Affairs in Canberra.

1.
Customs proclamation which prohibits importation into Australia of American aircraft will be amended shortly to permit importation under licenses issued by Controller of Civil Aviation. The [Page 775] Australian Government does not intend to give a general definition of the circumstances under which licenses to import American planes will or will not be granted, each case will be considered on its merits and a separate license will be required for each individual aircraft.
2.
To permit acceptance of individual aircraft for which license has been issued the authorities will require an American certificate to accompany the aircraft setting forth (a) that it is new, i. e., has not flown for more than 50 hours before date of shipment to Australia; (b) that detailed particulars of the type and (c) of the individual aircraft have been despatched to the Controller of Civil Aviation; and (d) that aircraft fully complies with Commonwealth airworthiness requirements for the present at least based on latest printed edition of American airworthiness requirements. Points (b), (c) and (d) are set forth in considerable technical detail.
3.
Note requests that Controller of Civil Aviation be supplied with the copies of all amendments that have been or may be issued subsequent to aeronautics bulletin 7, (a), dated October 1, 1934, (b), full particulars of any modifications prescribed in the United States for aircraft of any type operating in Australia and, (c), several pro forma copies of all documents which the United States proposes to issue to meet Australian requirements.
4.
Australian Government suggests that questions of procedure involved and of matters of airworthiness be the subject of direct correspondence between the competent American authorities and the Controller of Civil Aviation.

Full text being mailed.34

Squire35 requests that Commerce be kept informed.

Moffat
  1. Despatch No. 83, December 23, 1935; not printed.↩
  2. E. C. Squire, American Trade Commissioner at Sydney.↩