With just over a week before Christmas international and domestic flights have increased to meet the demand of travellers during the peak holiday season.

Air New Zealand has scheduled four 767 flights to Tonga this week and another five 767 flights during Christmas week.

Sue Leonard, the General Manager of Kingdom Travel Centre, said on December 12 that normally the Air New Zealand would have one 767 and four smaller A320 aircraft coming into Tonga every week from Auckland. The 767 has 230 seats while the A320 has 168 seats. 

“Due to the increased demand at Christmas we have upgraded some of the A320 flights to 767s to allow additional capacity and freight space,” she said.

Sue said in a normal week they would have a capacity of 902 seats into and out of Tonga. “We will have an additional 354 seats added to our capacity for this week alone and still have seats available for Christmas for those wanting to visit friends and family,” she said.

"We started increasing capacity at the beginning of December. We do this every year due to the high demand of the holiday season."

Domestic

Meanwhile, Tonga’s sole domestic airline Real Tonga has also increased its flights to and from the outer islands to cater for the Christmas traffic.

Commercial Manager Fakatele Faletau said they had increased the MA60 services to Vava‘u from one to two daily except Wednesdays when there is only one flight.

The domestic airline has also increased services to Ha’apai with up to four daily services.

Real Tonga operates three aircraft, including the Government’s gifted MA60 from China and two smaller aircraft the B-65 and BN-2.