More Info →Passengers on First DC-8 From Fiji

This image was taken for a story that ran in The Manawatu Evening Standard on 3
0th November 1965 "Mr. and Mrs. P.T. Ryan and their children, Martin and Jane, on their arrival at Palmerston North Airport. They had flown from Fiji on the first DC-8 flight from there to the new international airport at Mangere. Mr. Ryan, a senior technician in the veterinary biological unit at the Glaxo Laboratories, Palmerston North, was returning from a four-month furlough trip to Britain, where he and his family visited their relations and friends in their home county Yorkshire. They made the most of their trip, travelling out by Hong Kong, India and Rome and back by America. AS is customary, Mr. Ryan spend a month at head office laboratories in London and this, he said, was excellent for new ideas and widening the horizon. All were thrilled to return to their homeland, but after five years in New Zealand they were glad to be back here. If their welcome at home was exciting, it was more than matched by the warm greeting on their return to their adopted country. New Zealand just had something all the other places that they had seen lacked, said Mrs. Ryan."