FLIGHTS ON SUNDAY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIX, Issue 241, 10 September 1929, Page 7

FLIGHTS ON SUNDAY.

CONVICTION AT TIMARU. Per Press Association. TIMARU, Sept. 9. On a charge that within view of a. public road at Timaru, on Sunday, August 25, ho worked at his calling by taking passengers for a flight in an aeroplane for payment, William Henry Lett, who represents the GoodwinChichester Aviation Company, has been convicted without penalty. The Magistrate, Mr C. R. OnWalker, in giving his reserved judgment to-day, said that the defendant claimed exemption from the Police Offences Act, sub-section 3 of section 18 of which provided that every person was liable to a fine of £5 who on Sunday worked at his calling in view of the public. There were many exemptions, continued the Magistrate, but the only one which could apply to the defendant read: ‘Nothing in the foregoing provisions shall apply to persons driving any public or private motor carriage or cab.” The defendant contended that an aeroplane fitted up for the carriage of a person or persons was either a motor ear or carriage within the meaning of the exemption. In the ordinary sense of the word a motor-ear, in the Magistrate’s opinion, did not include an aeroplane, nor could tho word “carriage” be held to mean an aeroplane. Therefore he must hold that the defendant did not come within the exemption as claimed. As this was the only question he had to decide, a conviction would be entered; but as it bad been customary for aviators to take passengers for flights on Sundays for reward, apparently without objection by the authorities, there would bo no penalty.