New horizons give Air

Marshalls new hope

By Martin Tiffany

TALKING to Elizabeth Gounder about her work gives you the impression that her job involves something more physical than running an office.

She’ll tell you that “she came in with adrenalin flowing” and the flow has continued as she puts her office on its feet.

She talks of the “build-up” they are planning and emphasises strongly the “potential growth” that is there.

Straight from being owner and manageress of Macquarie Travel in Suva, Gounder, 31, joined Air Marshall Islands as Suva customer services man ager and set up its Suva office.

The mother of two explained that after firmly establishing Macquarie Travel, a travel agent, she decided to sell the business. While she was in the process of selling, Air Marshall Islands approached her to get their Suva office up and

running.

The New Zealand educated Gounder said she was still fired up from handling her own

company and transferred her energy to Air Marshalls. The Suva office opened on April 8 and is catering for the bulk of the airline’s business in Fiji. There are two flights a week between Majuro, Tarawa, Funafuti, Nadi and Suva. Both flights are being fulled to 50 per cent capacity with potential for growth.

Air Marshall’s first office in Fiji opened in Nadi in early February and took over the handling of its Fiji ticket sales from Fiji Air on March 28. In charge of the Nadi office is Kiri Richmond, formerly

with Fiji Air. Like Gounder, she speaks with enthusiasm about the airline’s future.

Richmond, the Nadi customer services manager, said Air Marshalls is “a growing airline” which is slowly estab lishing itself in the market. The recession in Australia, she said, has not affected the airline much because their passegers arc mostly business people.

The 10-year-old Air Marshall Islands is still in its infancy as far as Pacific air travel is concerned. But its mature, far sighted approach should see it emerge as a dominant carrier in the Pacific Rim in the not too distant future. It has recently implemented a five-year plan which includes the acquisition of a new aircraft, the seeking of landing rights in other Pacific Rim countries, an intense train ing programme and the implementation of participation agreements with the major CRS (a reservation) system.

The airline’s true strength lies in its role as a vital link to the outside world for the Marshall Islands and other small island nations in the Pacific. It com menced air services to Kiribati and Tuvalu in 1904 and has been appointed by the Tuvalu Government as the official air carrier.

To ensure continued service to Tuvalu the airline is retaining its 42-seatcr BA -740 until the airport on Funafuti has been upgraded to accommodate larger aircraft. An upgrading programme is likely to begin at the end of the year.

The airline began its life in 1980 as the Airline of the Marshall Islands using two Nomad aircraft on domestic services for inter-island travel. Today it still serves 26 outer islands in the Marshalls using modern turbo-prop aircraft two Dornier-228 and the BA-748. In 1984 the airline started to spread its wings and opened the Majuro-Tarawa-Funafuti- Suva service and has since begun a Suva- Funafuti-Nadi service.

In 1990 the airline changed its name to Air Marshall Islands to coincide with the introduction of a DC-8 service from Honolulu to the two Marshall atolls of

Kwajalein and Majuro. Today

this service transports passen gers and cargo four times a week and provides the Marshall Islands with a vital link to the outside world.

For the long term the airline hopes to establish a training center for the Marshallese people to enable them to take over and fully manage the airline. In the short term the airline plans to strengthen its existing services. The future?

They say: “We’re Flying New Horizons”. For Elizabeth Gounder, the question is: where next? □

Flying time: Elizabeth Gounder (right) with staff at Air Marshalls' Suva office

New horizons: Air Marshalls at Nadi Airport