Fiji’S International

Airport

Probably Nadi After All

WHEN it was officially announced, last year, that a committee of experts had recommended Suva Point as the site for the international airport in that part of the Pacific, and that between one and two million pounds would be spent on building the airport within the next two or three years, is was believed that the long argument between the Nadi-Lautoka and the Suva advocates was over.

But the matter has been reopened. It appears certain that the selection will go to Nadi, after all.

The responsibility for building the air port belongs to New Zealand. Under the present world set-up, NZ is in charge of the Fiji area, in respect of both defence and civil aviation. It was understood that NZ’s defence organisation needed the Nadi airport.

But now it appears that Nadi is not needed for NZ’s Air Force, exclusively.

Moreover, the cost of the Suva Point air port will be nearer four than two million pounds. On top of that, NZ resources, engineering as well as financial, are all needed for urgent building of new civil airports near Auckland and Wellington, and for completing the hugh international airport near Christchurch (which is to be the terminal of the Melbourne-New Zea land new air service, to start about the end of 1950).

The South Pacific Air Transport Coun cil sat in Melbourne the first week in May, and considered all these things. On May 4, Fiji heard in dismayed silence an announcement that the site of the inter national airport probably would be in Tonga, instead of Suva. On May 5, how ever, is was formally announced that the SPATC had recommended Nadi, and the general belief is that Nadi, improved and developed, will remain as it is now—the Central South Pacific calling-place for trans-Pacific planes.

The chief objection to Nadi, now, as in the past, is the difficulty of getting from Nadi to Suva, 140 miles away. If the traveller does not like a slow and most

comfortless journey in an Indian bus, crowded with Indians and Fijians, he must pay about £7 Fijian for a hire car.

There is afoot a plan to establish an inter-island flying-boat service within Fiji. If this provides a regular daily con nection between Suva and Nadi, or Suva and Lautoka, as is proposed, so that the traveller to Suva can reach his destin ation quickly, for a fare of 40/- or 60/-, then much of Suva’s strong feeling against Nadi may disappear.

There are indications that, at last, international complications are being smoothed away, so that the Trans-Pacific airlines will do the obvious, logical thing, and include New Zealand in their itinerary. Instead of making the long hop from Nadi (Fiji) to Sydney, a proportion of the air-liners will fly from Nadi to Auckland, and thence to Sydney.