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Since any development work at Ohakea will benefit the Royal New Zealand Air Force, and the amount of civil use involved by its designation as an alternate is unlikely to interfere with the Air Force, no more economical solution could be found. 257. The reasons for rejecting the claims of sundry local authorities for international airports located at minor cities and towns are given in Chapter 5, paragraph 82. 258. The problems involved' in providing the international airports required and the reasons for rejecting Wellington as the location of an international land aerodrome, are examined below. Auckland 259. We have examined the Air Force aerodrome at Whenuapai and come to the conclusion that this aerodrome can never be made to comply fully with 1.C.A.0. international aerodrome safety requirements, because of the hills in the immediate vicinity of the aerodrome. These hills not only constitute irremovable flightway obstructions, but also circuit obstructions, and in neither respect can the aerodrome ever be other than substandard. Moreover, it is possible to extend only one of the runways to the required length, except at prohibitive cost. These basic limitations, taken together with the fact that Whenuapai is and will continue to be required as an Air Force aerodrome and cannot accommodate both military and civil operations when they expand much above their present level, convince us that it will be necessary to construct a new international civil airport in the Auckland area. 260. The Civil Aviation Directorate and the Ministry of Works (Aerodromes Engineer) have prepared an exhaustive analysis of the physical characteristics of Whenuapai aerodrome and its possible development, and the extent to which it fails to meet 1.C.A.0. proposed standards. A note on the principal limitations to its development as an international airport is given in Appendix I. In view of its present shortcomings, we agree with the Director of Civil Aviation that Whenuapai can only be safely used by international air services, subject to certain restrictions. These restrictions, we need hardly add, will bear increasingly on the efficiency and regularity of international air services as they expand, and as new types of aircraft are introduced. 261. On the practice of " joint user " of an aerodrome by Air Force and civil aviation, it should be appreciated that, while the growth in volume of total traffic would in time place a limitation on the use of the aerodrome by both, there is in fact a present limitation arising from the different nature of military and civil operations. While casual use of an Air Force aerodrome by civil aircraft or of a civil aerodrome