Airlines PNG, Papua New Guinea’s publicly-listed airline, says it will concentrate on improving its domestic services after ending a codeshare agreement with Virgin Australia on the Port Moresby-to-Brisbane route.
‘In the first half of this year, we will be bringing two new aircraft into domestic service and are directing a great deal of time and effort into revising our schedule and bringing our on-time performance up to the international benchmark of 85%,’ said Muralee Siva, Chief Executive Officer of Airlines PNG in a statement.
Siva said that in the first quarter of 2013, the airline’s on-time performance had increased to 78% – ‘a significant achievement given the challenging operating conditions in PNG,’ he said. ‘We believe these initiatives will have great benefits for the people of PNG and that our time is better spent in them.’
Under the codeshare arrangement, Airlines PNG re-sold seats on Virgin’s planes. Virgin Australia will continue to operate the Brisbane–Port Moresby route. An extension of the codeshare arrangement was only approved back in February.
USD 0.2518
AUD 0.3884
GBP 0.199
EUR 0.2389
NZD 0.4276
JPY 38.13
SGD 0.3382
Recent readers’ comments