Nadi May Still Be Fiji's Main Airport
p. 13 · Read in the full issue
THERE will be more conferences soon between the United Kingdom, Aus tralia and New Zealand as to whether or not they will go on with the plan to build an international airport at Suva, Fiji—or change their minds again to Nadi.
Fiji’s international airport is the most argued about aerodrome in the world.
Apart from innumerable conferences be tween the governments who will pay for it (about £3X million) it at one time caused almost civil strife in Fiji between supporters of the present airports at Nadi and Nausori.
Nadi is in the dry zone of Viti Levu, but is about 150 miles from Suva, the capital of Fiji; Nausori is only 17 miles from Suva, but is built on the banks of the Rewa River in the wet zone of the island.
Both aerodromes were built during the war.
Successive teams of air experts from the three governments which will have to foot the bill inspected Nadi and Nausori and finally fixed on a brand new airport to be built at Suva Point —evidently taking the view that it would cost
very little more to build a new establish ment right in Suva, than it would to bring the Nausori drome up to inter national standard.
It appears that the Australian and UK experts were in favour of Nadi but bowed to the wishes of New Zealand which was strong for Suva as this worked in with its own regional Pacific Islands air ser vices. And Nadi, NZ said, was required for defence purposes by the RNZAF.
Since then there have been more con ferences, engineering, financial and other wise, and the three Governments now seem to be wryly considering the esti mated cost of the project, and indulging in second thoughts.
Nadi is believed to be again the favourite choice—and UK and Australia hope that this time New Zealand will play ball. Meanwhile the three trans pacific air services are quite happily using Nadi airport and the Fiji government has been preparing to resume the land at Suva Point and working out a way to do it in order to cause the least trouble to the people whom they would have had to ievict.