And another letter in today's ( Wednesday ) Pos-Guria.
Flight stunt
Direct flights from Port Moresby to Kuala Lumpur is a political stunt, there is no other explanation.
Malaysia is right next door to Singapore and we already have two flights a week to Singapore. There are about 20 connecting flights from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur every day and it’s less than 30 minutes flying time. It doesn’t make any economic sense to have direct flights to Kuala Lumpur unless we can guarantee full flights every trip. Having direct flights to KL before having direct flights to Melbourne, Jakarta, Beijing or Honolulu is hard to fathom. It can only be due to political pressure. We almost lost the flight to Narita in favour of Kuala Lumpur. They said the direct flight from KL will lure business travellers and tourists. But business travellers will still travel via Singapore even if there are no direct flights, because they want what we have (resources). Only tourists are lured by direct flights because then they use up less of their holiday time in travelling. But the tourism market from Malaysia will be very small. How many Malaysian tourists have we seen in PNG lately? Zip. Maybe direct flights from KL to Wewak will be next.
Skystar.....ANG is a reference to Air Niugini , AKA... PX / Pixie / Air Nogat / Air Yu Gimi / and a few others that cannot be mentioned here