By Pesi Fonua

Tonga has been without a domestic air service for four months. While the owner of the privately owned Real Tonga Airline said he wanted to find a way to partner with government, all his staff have left the airline and joined a new government-owned venture, the Lulutai Airline Ltd., which is set to launch a new domestic service in September.

Tevita Palu the Owner/Manager of Real Tonga Airline told Matangi Tonga on August 25 that all his staff “from top to bottom are with the Lulutai”.

Real Tonga Airline had operated as Tonga’s sole domestic airline since 2013, and over the years extended its service internationally to Fiji and Samoa.

However, Tevita said that since December 2019 he had problems keeping the air service running. He had financial shortfalls. The situation continued to deteriorate at the beginning of this year with the worldwide spreading of COVID-19. “Sales dropped by about $90,000 daily,” he said. So he started to lay-off some of his staff.

“Before the COVID it was a struggle to keep things running but it has thrown things off balance. As for me I have a lot of debt, all I'm trying to do is to balance things.”

Tevita said he wanted to share the resources with government and get the domestic service running. “And if there is a shortfall for government to subsidise it, but it was rejected by government.”

Aircraft

At the beginning of this year, Real Tonga had two aircrafts in operation, a 25-seater SAAB 340 leased from an Australian company, and a 12-seater Y12 leased from the Tongan government. The Y12 was a gift to Tonga from the People's Republic of China. Real Tonga's lease of the aircraft expired and had not been renewed.

Real Tonga had also leased from the Tongan Government a 56-seater MA60 aircraft, which was also a gift from PRC to Tonga, but it had been out of service for a while and the lease had been terminated.

This left Real Tonga with only one aircraft in operation.

The situation turned from bad to worse for Real Tonga in May when its SAAB 340 was put out of action by a bird strike on its wing after it took off from the Lupepau’u Airport, Vava’u.

To get the plane fixed Tevita said he had to borrow $USD500,000 from the bank.

The SAAB 340 had been fixed but the Australian company had cancelled its lease of the SAAB 340 with the Real Tonga Airline. Now the aircraft has been leased to the Lulutai Airlines Ltd.

Challenges

Tonga’s domestic airline service at the moment is in an unusual situation, because all the staff and the two aircrafts, the SAAB 340 and Y12 that Real Tonga had been flying, have gone over to the Lulutai Airlines Ltd.

Meanwhile, Tevita said that Real Tonga holds the licences issued by the Pacific Aviation Safety Office (PASO) for the planes to fly. Real Tonga also has a licence to provide an aircraft engineering maintenance service.

But the engineers have left Real Tonga and joined Lulutai Airlines Ltd, which are advertising the launch of a domestic service on 19 September.

“I have made a proposal to government for a partnership, but I think they thought it was time for them to take over.

“I proposed for us to become partners by providing the maintenance service but now they have all our staff and they are going to establish an engineering maintenance company,” he said.

Tevita said that the owners of Tonga’s two domestic airline services had not met to sort out their differences. He said that he had written to the Prime Minister a number of times and proposed how Real Tonga and Lulutai might work together, but there had been no response.

Government

Meanwhile, Edgar Cocker, the government's Secretary for the Lulutai told Matangi Tonga that they had tried to set a time to meet Tevita Palu, but again there had been no response.

So currently Tonga has two domestic airlines and no services.