New user-friendly flight schedule
Air Niugini’s northern summer schedule came into effect recently.It is designed to be userfriendly for business travellers, leisure visitors and trade.
Under the new schedule, Air Niugini will operate three times a week to Hong Kong – every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday – providing more frequent connections to north Asia. The airline previously operated on Tuesdays and Saturdays.
The flights take six-and-ahalf hours and are timed to provide convenient connections between Hong Kong and Air Niugini’s domestic destinations. The schedule will also allow travellers to fly between Hong Kong and Honiara, Nadi, Cairns and Brisbane, connecting via Port Moresby.
Hong Kong is among the top 10 busiest airports in the world in terms of passenger numbers, and offers convenient connections to China, north-east Asia, North America and Europe. Hong Kong is also the world’s busiest airport for cargo.
With the third Hong Kong service, it now brings a total of 14 Air Niugini flights to Asia each week. Air Niugini operates five flights to Singapore, four to Manila in the Philippines, one to Denpasar in Indonesia, one to Narita in Japan, and the Hong Kong services. Air Niugini has also re-timed its first morning service out of Brisbane, PX006, to a 7.55am departure, instead of 9am, to give travellers the benefit of an earlier, 11.05am, arrival into Port Moresby. The second daily service from Brisbane, PX004, still leaves at 10.40am.
From Port Moresby, departures to Brisbane are at 6.15am (PX003) and 1.30pm (PX005).
The airline will continue to operate twice-daily services to Brisbane, except on Saturday, when there is only one service.
Air Niugini will also introduce the Fokker 100 jet on the Port Moresby– Cairns route, replacing the Q400 aircraft. The Fokker 100 will be 20 minutes faster on the journey and will also provide more freight capacity.
On the domestic front, F100 services between Port Moresby and Lae have increased to four a day. There is also an additional Q400 flight to Vanimo on Thursdays.
Q400 Kieta services have been re-timed to connect with international flights at Port Moresby.
Air Niugini’s subsidiary company, Link PNG, started commercial flights to Losuia airport in Kiriwina, Milne Bay Province, at the end of March, with direct flights from Port Moresby every Monday and Friday.
Losuia airport is located on Kiriwina Island, which is part of the Trobriand group of islands.
In addition to the Losuia service, Link PNG has also introduced daily services to Kiunga, Mount Hagen and Lae, via Rabaul.
Previously, Link PNG operated from Lae to Hoskins, Rabaul and back to Lae.
Link PNG now operates to 14 PNG destinations.
The airline’s Dash 8 fleet operates all Link PNG services.
Meanwhile, Air Niugini has had to postpone its flights to Chimbu because of construction work being carried out by the National Airports Corporation.
Flights will resume as soon as the work has been completed, estimated by the NAC to be in December.