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materials needed to complete the repairs, but plans are in hand for complete rehabilitation; in the case of the vehicle ferry, for instance, it is hoped that a 20-minute schedule will be in operation by June, 1947, and a 12-minute schedule by the end of that year. The traffic using the services operated at the end of the year was considerable. During 1946, some 30 million passengers and 150,000 vehicles were transported in the vessels of the Hong Kong and Yaumati Ferry Company, while the passengers using the Star Ferry increased through- out the year, and a total of 67,000 was recorded on one day. Operating costs and wages were much higher than before the war and fares were increased. In the case of the Star Ferry the increase was 100%, the first class fare for the harbour crossing being 20 cents at the end of the year, and the third class fare, 10 cents. Similar fare increases were introduced in the cross-harbour services operated by the Hong Kong and Yaumati Ferry Company.

Air Services.

Hong Kong is a most important link in the net-work of post-war aviation and to retain its place it requires above all things a first-rate modern aerodrome. Saigon in Indo-China is 51/2 hours flying distance away and Singapore can be reached in 9 hours flying on the direct route. The journey to Nanking, the capital of China, takes 4 hours, Manila in the Philippine Islands is only 411⁄2 hours journey, and Japan can be reached in one stage by flying boat in 91⁄2 hours. A weekly flying boat service to the United Kingdom was set up by British Overseas Airways Corporation in August, 1946 (the journey takes 6 days), and the Colony is connected by the services of Chinese air transport companies with the Chinese airports of Shanghai, Nanking, Chungking, Kunming, Hainan Island and with Canton, only 40 minutes' flying time from the Colony.

The Colony's only airfield, Kaitak, is to the north-east of Kowloon and 15 minutes' drive from Kowloon's main hotel. Situated as it is close under a range of steep hills rising at one point to a height of 1,800 feet, it is an airfield which by modern standards leaves much to be desired. The Japanese during their occupation of the Colony carried out a consider- able extension of this aerodrome, doubling its size at the expense of adjacent Chinese houses and fields and of the former civil airport buildings and hangars and constructing two new concrete runways. In spite of these improvements the aerodrome remained inadequate for heavy aircraft and its shortcomings were emphasised by the aeronautical develop- ments which had taken place during the war. Early in the Military Administration site formation for the construction of a new aerodrome in the north-eastern area of the New Terri- tories was commenced but this had to be abandoned because the site selected would not fully have conformed with the