Who’s flying

what in PNG

Air Niugini is operated by the PNG National Airlines Commission (NAC) under the chairmanship of Paul Pora. It is the national airline of PNG, 89% owned by the government. Its board is re sponsible through the NAC to the Ministry of Trans port.

Air Niugini was formed in 1974 as the sole domestic and international airline carrier, and it moved into the Australia-PNG route which until then had been operated

solely by Australia.

At home it took over the PNG domestic routes which until then had been operated by Ansett Airlines of PNG and Trans Australia Airlines.

The deal included the nego tiated takeover of the PNG fleets of Ansett and TAA, consisting then of eight F 27 Fokker Friendships and 10 DC3s.

Initially PNG held a bare controlling interest in its air line, the other shareholders being Qantas, Ansett and TAA, all Australian-based.

The Qantas and TAA interests were subsequently bought out, and the 11% shareholding still held by the Ansett group will be bought

out eventually.

Air Niugini is based in Port Moresby and serves 18 other domestic ports on trunk routes, including a long over water flight to Kieta on Bougainville Island which is more distant from Port Moresby than the Australian coast.

It flies internationally to

Australia (Sydney, Brisbane

and Cairns), Hong Kong,

Japan, the Philippines,

Indonesia (to Jayapura just across the border) and Solomon Islands.

Later this year, with an extension of its fleet. Air Niugini will also fly to the Indonesian capital Jakarta and to Hawaii.

Talair, headed by Australian born Denis Buchanan, who has spent his working life in PNG, is the biggest third-level operator in the Pa cific and would stand high in world third-level operations.

The company is based at Goroka in PNG’s Eastern

Highlands the country’s

biggest inland town where the altimeter reads more than 1500 metres above sea level before you get off the ground.

Talair’s main area of oper ations extends throughout the Highlands with links to the north and south coast and the eastern mainland. It has a fleet of 63 aircraft on the

Norman Islanders, five Twin Otters and 11 Cessna 402 commuter twins. The others are 15 single-engine Cessnas, two Pilatus Turbo-Porters (Switzerland), 11 Beechcraft Barons, a Brazilian Ban deirante, and a Piper Aztec.

The airline operates some

regular public transport

routes as well as cargo and pasenger charters.

Douglas Airways is PNG’s second-largest third-level op erator and grew from earlier experience in the PNG char ter industry by another Aus tralian, Denis Douglas. The company is based in Port

Moresby and operates throughout the southern half of the PNG mainland from west to east. It has been granted some regular passen ger transport routes in ad dition to its charter work.

Douglas has a fleet of 19 air craft with 10 Britten-Norman Islanders as the backbone.

The firm has become closely involved with ancillary services in the avi ation industry. One of these is a plan to assemble Aus tralian Nomad aircraft in

PNG. Douglas already has

Nomads in its fleet.

It has also embarked on a pilot training scheme for Papua New Guineans with ground and air instruction, a

service previously provided

by only the South Pacific Aero Clubs in Port

Moresby.

Missionary and institutional operators: One aircraft in every five holding a charter licence in PNG and a num ber of private-licensed air craft as well is operated by non-profit institutions associ ated with church, missionary, educational, or health work, or with social, cultural or

language research.

There are eight operators in this field using 32 aircraft licensed for charter work, mainly Cessna 206 types. The

biggest single operator of

these is the missionary avaia

tion fellowship, a regional

branch of a world-wide or ganisation. MAF has 13 air craft in its PNG fleet, based at a number of locations.

One institution endowed from the US, the Summer Institute of Linguistics, in cludes two Hiller helicopters in its fleet of six aircraft.