17 Oct 2006

New Nauru airline launches services across Central Pacific

3:59 pm on 17 October 2006

Nauru's new airline, Our Airline, has begun operations, 10 months after the sole aircraft of its failed predecessor Air Nauru was repossessed.

Nauru's resurrected airline will initially operate a twice-weekly service linking Brisbane with Solomon Islands, Nauru, Kiribati and the Marshall Islands.

The airline's Boeing-737 was repossessed by the US EXIM Bank last year before Taiwan bought the replacement Boeing-737 for Nauru that the airline is leasing from the government.

The airline's chief executive, Geoffrey Bowmaker, says its new name reflects its new regional direction.

"The same legal entity is involved, which is Nauru Air corporation, but we've just simply changed the trading name. We've changed that to Our Airline to represent a more regional co-operative concept than what Air Nauru in itself portrays."

Geoffrey Bowmaker says the big challenge for the airline is to regain business lost since Air Nauru's closure, which includes losing the lucrative route between Kiribati and Fiji.