Some questions about airline flying in 70's/80's

[Centaurus]

I flew for a small airline in 1976 to 1989 called Air Nauru which in those days had had three Boeing 737's. . Because we rarely had a full cabin, the captain would stroll through the cabin during cruise and talk to each of the passengers. Our destinations included Hong Kong, Taipei, Kagoshima in Japan, Okinawa, Saipan, guam, Truk, Pohnpei, Majuro in the Marshal Islands, Tarawa in the Kiribati Islands, Nauru Island, Honiara in the Solomon Islands, Port Vila in Vanuatu, Fiji, Wallis Island, Tonga, Apia in Western Samoa, Pago Pago in Americam Samoa, Raratonga in the Cook Islands, New Zealand, Sydney and Melbourne in Australia The crews were mainly Australlian pilots while the flight attendants came from the different islands and countries that airline served. The airline's flight safety record was exemplary

Nauru was in those days a phosphate rich island that took one 25 minutes to drive around the whole island which had a population of 8.000 Some routes were 1400 miles such as Majuro to Honolulu. Others were generally two hour legs with the shortest route being Nandi to Nausauri within Fiji of 25 minutes. The variety of passengers was extensive from World War 2 American veterans of the Pacific war returning to old battle fields of Guadalcanal, Tarawa and Guam, to international yacht crews returning from delivering yachts to various parts of the Pacific to scuba divers on to sunken Japanese ships in Truk Lagoon.

One passenger I talked to when visiting the cabin was a Singer Sowing machine mechanic. In the 1920's mIssionarys had brought the old pedal operated Singer sowing machines to the remore Pacific islands. He would stop at one island to repair a broken Singer sowing machine and was invited to stay the night. Then he would fix other broken items like toasters or even radios. He would then move to another island and fix more items like a bicyle chain and stay for a few days repairing things around the island then move on and so on. If you Google the words Tall Tails of the South Pacific more stories of Air Nauru will come up