airline study

Air Nauru sponsors Micronesian airline study

By Giff Johnson

AIR Nauru has taken action that could help change the central Pacific’s reputation as the sub-region with the worst air ser vice. Nauru President Bernard Dowiyogo announced in early February at the close of a transporta tion ministerial meeting in Nauru that Air Nauru was launching a survey of air service needs in the Micronesian region in an effort to support estab lishment of a sub-regional airline.

The initial survey - carried out by ANA COM Management Corporation of Manila - was clearly out of the ordinary as it was started within three days of Dowiyogo’s announcement and finished by the end of

February. “There has been so much talk and previous studies about a sub-regional airline,” said Air Marshall Islands general manager, Marc Mackay, in Majuro after the announcement. He added that this sur vey has a different focus, since all the countries agree on the critical need to improve air service in the Micronesian area.

The new survey will focus on what Air Nauru and other islands can do to improve the service by meeting specific needs of each country in the Micronesian area, he said. “The meeting agreed that this sub region has the worst air service of any area within the South Pacific Forum,” Mackay said. “This study is looking for solutions to the problem, (including) a sub-regional air line.”

“We are studying the opportunities for establishing a sub-regional air service to fill gaps in the current service,” said Antonio P. Soriano. He is a senior vice president with ANACOM who led a study group on a 10-day island hopping mission through Majuro, Pohnpei, Chuuk, Nauru, Kiribati, Tuvalu, Guam and Saipan during February. He termed the study a “market assessment” that will lay the basis for a decision to move ahead with a more detailed feasibility study for a sub-regional air service. The two-day transportation ministerial meeting in Nauru in early February produced a high degree of coop

eration among transportation and airline representatives from the Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Nauru and the Marshall Islands, Mackay said. The men tality that each island nation must have its own flag carrier is evolving to a feeling that “we just need to get the air service established,” he said.

Dowiyogo said that the first phase of Air Nauru’s survey will be to identify the “enhancements required for each state’s tourism programs to enable a base volume of tourist and trade passenger traffic to flow to and from each of the destinations.”

“The survey is being undertaken initial ly because of our obligation to consider additional services in the Federated States of Micronesia, but it clearly may assist the deliberations of the (sub-regional govern mental) task force regarding a sub-regional airline,” said Dowiyogo.

Mackay said that in contrast to many of the larger South Pacific islands, the Micronesian area suffers from the lack of a tourist base that would bring increased air service.

Soriano said that his group is studying the possibility of tours that include stops in several of these central Pacific islands as a way to increase the appeal of the Micronesian area to tourists, since these islands - with the exception of Guam, Saipan and Palau - do not have a high degree of tourist infrastructure. ■