Air Vanuatu is the small national airline of South Pacific nation Vanuatu (as the name suggests). The airline was founded in 1981, when Vanuatu gained independence from the United Kingdom and France, and the airline was started with the assistance of (now defunct) Ansett Airlines.
Continue reading: Air Vanuatu Cancels Flights, Faces Uncertain Future
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Seems to me the most sensible outcome will be for Vanuatu to end up with a national domestic carrier/island hopper to facilitate domestic connectivity between islands, likely not as a money maker but as a necessary government-funded service, while leaving the matter of international jet service to other carriers. Fiji Airways serves Port Vila and probably makes for the best connecting hub for getting around the South Pacific.
Not sure that the best strategy for a tourist market is to force your customers to reach you via a competing tourist market.
I visited Vanuatu as part of the 2022 Alaska Airlines deal for 20,000 points OW in Y or 40,000 points in J. Since Alaska offers free stopovers, I booked a one-way ticket from the US to Fiji with a stopover in Port Vila.
My seatmate on the flight to Port Vila was going to Vanuatu for the sole purpose of purchasing Vanuatu citizenship through the very cheap citizenship by investment program.
However, I really wanted to visit the island of Espiritu Santo, instead of the island Port Vila is located. Therefore, I had to fly Air Vanuatu domestically roundtrip from Port Vila to Santo on an ATR 72. It was pleasant, but I didn't realize they only have a single ATR 72 aircraft.
When I was back in Port Vila awaiting my Fiji Airways flight back to Nadi, another flight leaving around the same time, the 737 Air Vanuatu flight to Brisbane, which had only recently resumed flights due to the ending of the COVID-19 lockdown, was delayed a few hours due to technically issues.
I really enjoyed Vanuatu as a destination. It's not for everyone (it was much more rustic than Fiji), but it was quite beautiful. Because it had been closed for COVID for so long and cruise ship traffic hadn't restarted, I had sites like Champagne Beach or the blue holes to myself. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to see the volcano.
Jason, I'm curious about the routing on your ticket to Port Vila - were you allowed to ticket Port Vila as the stopover (connecting it through Fiji) and then backtrack to Fiji as the final destination?
The Alaska Airlines/Fiji Airways routing was JFK-SFO-NAN-VLI (Stopover)-NAN (Destination). I chose to have VLI as the Stopover instead of NAN, because on the return ticket I wanted a different stopover. Alaska Airline's website had no trouble with either routing using the multicity award search tool.
No one's "forcing" anything, Hutch. That's the beauty of it. And as a sidenote, Air Vanuatu has competition on most of its 737 routes, anyway.
But the main point is if a sufficiently robust market exists, someone will fill it. If demand isn't there, those who want to/from Port Vila badly enough will accept connections to make it happen.
A government-funded international operation consisting of a single 737 is sufficiently wasteful to make a former Alitalia executive blush. There's a point where the price paid to subsidize/attract tourists outstrips the benefit of the cash actually brought in from the tourists.
Hi Ben, didn't CBS do a series of "Survivor" in Vanuatu in 2004-ish? I'm assuming that'll be how most Americans will know of the country. It seems to be quite an interesting country geography wise, but didn't you plan a trip there in 2018-ish? I'm convinced I remember reading about your plans to fly there around that year.
Vanuatu is a wonderful destination and indeed much more rustic than Fiji. It got recently voted the “happiest nation on earth” (not sure how much to read into those panels). It’s very close to Sydney (3 hrs flight time ish).
My sister and her family just spent two weeks there and had to deal with these plane issues (eventually they flew on Fijian and back tracked to Port Vila). I think Qantas code-shares with air Vanuatu but I don’t think they’ve supported customers by putting their own planes on the route.
Over half of tourists to Vanuatu come from Australia. This is a relatively short flight. If you consider Australia and New Zealand, most of their served cities do not have a competitor. This includes Australia's two biggest markets, Sydney and Melbourne.
If those potential customers, are looking for a pacific holiday, some of those customers may just opt for another island that they can access more easily. We know this through the existence of history of non-stop flights.
There comes a point, where small isolated countries, dependent on tourists for their economy, imports and easy access to larger economies (healthcare, education), may need to accept that access is more important, than the relative small cost of an airline or subsidising another carrier where required.