Retention of staff members, including pilots, remains a challenge for Air Niugini, says chief executive officer Gary Seddon.
He told a Kumul Consolidated Holdings Limited meeting in Port Moresby on Friday that “we must ensure that PNG’s best pilots and engineers are kept despite the call for higher salaries and permanent residency opportunities in Australia and New Zealand and so on”.
“That is a very real problem for us,” Seddon said. “We lost five pilots to Qantas and Jet Star last month.
“I have lost avionics engineers to Air New Zealand and licensed aircraft maintenance engineer to Qantas in Perth. We have international best standard pilots working for Air Niugini and they are highly sought after.
“Where there are challenges, there are opportunities waiting to be seized.”
State Enterprises Minister William Duma said Air Niugini could not be a competitive and sustainable airline with its current aged fleet of aircraft.
“Air Niugini is at the advanced stages of a fleet replacement programme which began in 2023 to replace
half of its aged fleet,” Duma said.
“A total of 13 aircraft – 11 Airbus A220 narrow body jets and potentially two Boeing 787 Dreamliner wide-body jets – at a projected cost of around K3 billion (US$347 million). Significant external U.S dollar denominated debt funding has been secured from Export Finance Australia to support this long-term fleet financing.
The vulnerability of the airline to external shocks and macroeconomic variables such as fuel prices and exchange rates obviously need to be closely monitored and mitigated,” he said.
“With the arrival of new Airbus aircraft, we want to build an airline within an airline.”.
