Royal Tongan Airlines has confirmed today that using other airlines they have uplifted nearly all of the 1,300 passengers stranded in Nuku'alofa, Auckland, Sydney, Rarotonga and Honolulu since the RTA international service was grounded on April 22.

Last Friday May 7 there were 59 passengers stranded in Tonga still waiting to be uplifted with 28 for Auckland,12 for Sydney and for Honolulu. Some of these have been uplifted in the last few days.

Tonga's Privy Council on Friday April 30 guaranteed $300,000 pa'anga to finance the tickets of the 1,300 RTA passengers who were stranded in Nuku'alofa, Auckland, Sydney, Rarotonga and Honolulu.

Meleseini Lomu of the Ministry of Finance confirmed that this money was directed by the Privy Council to be used solely to finance the tickets of the stranded passengers on all of the RTA routes.

The Tonga Government is currently directly involved in trying to uplift disrupted passengers to various destinations by sealing arrangements with Polynesian Airlines and Air Pacific.

Fakatele Faletau, of RTA said that they began uplifting passengers from Tonga to Sydney on April 4.

He said that the arrangements with the two carriers were slightly different. Polynesian Airlines offered lower rates and was flying passengers on its to Auckland and Sydney route.

Air Pacific had an International Flight Manifestation, a single document that replaced a whole number of tickets, assisting in flying passengers to Honolulu via Nadi.

Fakatele added that over a 100 of its stranded passengers had been uplifted from the Tonga to Auckland route.

No announcement had been made regarding the future of Royal Tongan Airlines staff.