Air Niugini Cancels Boeing 787 Order, Left With Uncertain Wide Body Future

One of the upcoming Boeing 787 operators I was most looking forward to flying has just canceled its order for the plane at the last minute. Not only that, but with the carrier’s current wide body aircraft expected to be retired soon, one wonders what the future holds…

Air Niugini’s wide body future is looking very uncertain

Air Niugini, the government owned national airline of Papua New Guinea, no longer has plans to acquire two Boeing 787-8s, as reported by ch-aviation. For context, in 2023, the airline placed an order for two Dreamliners — deliveries were initially expected in 2026, but the delivery timeline was eventually pushed back to late 2027.

The intent was that these two planes would replace the carrier’s two Boeing 767-300ERs, which are the wide body aircraft the airline currently flies. The 787 would represent a significant step up in terms of passenger experience, range, and also capacity, and it’s a plane some of us were excited to see.

However, the airline has ultimately decided it no longer wants these planes, as this order has quietly been dropped. As a result, the airline no longer has any wide body planes on order.

What makes this even more noteworthy is that both of Air Niugini’s 767s are leased, and the leases are supposed to expire at the end of 2026, so that means the airline may no longer have any wide body aircraft. Now, given that the 767s are an average of over 30 years old, I imagine a lease extension is also possible, since I suspect the owners don’t have any super lucrative plans for these planes, other than to use them for parts. So we’ll see how this evolves.

Interestingly, Air Niugini is currently modernizing its narrow body fleet, as the airline takes delivery of 11 Airbus A220s (eight A220-100s and three A220-300s), and that’s expected to continue. Those are replacing Fokker 70s and Fokker 100s. Goodness, the airline has a fun fleet!

Why did Air Niugini backtrack on its Dreamliner plans?

Air Niugini has apparently been uncertain about its Boeing 787 plans for quite some time. In early 2025, the company’s chairman noted that they were reviewing the Dreamliner agreement due to “changing circumstances.” Months later, the CEO at the time continued to insist that the planes would still be delivered, as it was an important part of the carrier’s overall strategy.

However, the airline did recently get a new CEO (well, a returning CEO, who was at the airline until 2020, at which point he served as CEO of SkyTeam). According to company officials, in the short term, the goal is to focus on “maintaining and enhancing operations and profitability,” and in the medium term, they will “prepare Air Niugini for initial partial privatisation at the right time.”

Aircraft are of course expensive, so I guess the government just decided it didn’t want to spend that type of money right now, and I assume that the typical Dreamliner delivery delays gave them an out anyway, without penalty.

While I can appreciate the desire to focus on a more financially sustainable airline, it’s also worth mentioning that Air Niugini’s wide body flights import and export a lot of things from Papua New Guinea, so I have to imagine this will have bigger economic impacts.

Bottom line

Unfortunately Air Niugini no longer has plans to acquire two Boeing 787s. Given that the carrier’s two Boeing 767s are expected to be retired soon, that leaves the carrier with an uncertain future when it comes to wide body operations. At the same time, the airline is continuing to take delivery of Airbus A220s, which are at least modernizing the narrow body fleet.

What do you make of this Air Niugini development?