Solomon Airlines starts Sydney flights

Transcript

Solomon Airlines has started its weekly service to Sydney, flying out of Honiara on a Monday and returning on Tuesday.

The carrier's commercial services manager says the launch is slightly early and he would have liked to have had more time for sales teams to promote the service.

Gus Kraus spoke with Koroi Hawkin about the new service

GUS KRAUS: It has been in the making for a while including a potential to expand into PNG and more service into Fiji so it is all part of the plans. But for our sake I was probably hoping that we may give a bit more time to the marketing effort before we launched the Sydney service but having said that the company made the decision and we are working very closely with the Solomon Islands Visitors Bureau to actually get that attention in the Australian marketplace that Solomons is a new tourism destination on the market and it has worked quite effectively so far but you know, things have been a little bit slow because  I think one has to consider that the economic stance of Australia is also probably not that buoyant. I think other airlines traveling into Australia are feeling a little bit of the tightness as well.

KOROI HAWKINS: When did these flights start and how often are they going to Sydney?

GK: Basically the intention was that, it was the first flight was open on the first of June and it is a Honiara-Sydney flight at the back end of a Brisbane-Honiara flight on Mondays and it returns from Sydney on Tuesdays and it continues onto Brisbane off that service. So we are launching obviously a weekly flight at the moment to Sydney but as I have indicated elsewhere that I think once a week is not adequate to service a market of that nature. And we are reviewing our position as far as the total number of flights into  Australia including our four flights from Brisbane.

KH: And numbers wise as you mentioned briefly there has there been much of a reception to these flights? Are people taking it up?

GK: Well I can tell you truthfully that the first flight going down we had some visitors on board that we took down as VIP guests of ours and  that had under 50 people which is probably about 40 percent load factor. Coming back we had 65 on board which is probably the 50 percent load factor and its sitting there at the moment  around between  40 and 50 percent so we really have to push that upwards because we have a lot of promotional airfares in those areas as well. And we are working with a company called ignite in Australia both visitors bureau and us and they have templated a new product called My Solomons. They are part of the group that actually developed My Fiji and My Bali and My Phuket campaigns. So for the first time we are spending some real hard earned funds into the Australian market to give that tourism a push.