still searching
p. 69 · Read in the full issue
Fiji Airways still searching for a new name
Fiji Airways Ltd. will decide on its new name at a board meeting in Suva in March, but it’s unlikely the airline will use it until it buys its first small pure-jet in early 1972.
The airline has been considering a multitude of new names which it says would better represent its wide spread Islands network.
Qantas, with a major shareholding, put up a two-word name last year but this was rejected after con siderable debate. Some observers have suggested there should be no name change at all, as “Fiji” already conjures up a vision of the romantic South Seas.
The company hasn’t yet decided which small jet to buy to replace the company’s HS74B prop-jet, of which it has three. Two suggested so far are the Fokker Friendship 28 and the 500 mph BAC 111, and the company is weighing the pros and cons of each and looking around for other jets of these types.
Other developments
Aviation developments are but one of several changes on the Fiji travel scene. Visitors continue to increase by over 25 per cent, a year and 200 extra first-class hotel rooms are needed on Viti Levu’s Coral Coast.
The government’s much-promoted SF2O million resort complex for Natadola, on the Coral Coast, could possibly get started soon, but on a piecemeal basis rather than as a combined effort.
Natadola, planned on 2,000 acres by several hotel interests who have been promised government finance for roads, water facilities and elec tricity, hasn’t materialised because one landowner wouldn’t agree to the sale of his land for the complex.
PIM understands one major over seas investor could now go ahead with a single luxury resort of its own.
A year ago BOAC was interested in the Natadola scheme, or a similar project in this area.
In Sydney in December, the Fiji Visitors Bureau’s Sydney chief, Russ Cribble, not long back from a visit to the US, said he found that Fiji’s at traction to Americans was still its unspoiled people. Americans would continue to take in Fiji on their South Pacific tours, and not make the colony a destination point, as Australians and New Zealanders did.