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High demand causes PX flight chaos
By BIBIAN BARRENG
FLIGHTS to Highlands towns on Air Niugini
are fully booked and people wanting to travel to the Highlands for the
elections are jostling for available seat.
And the situation is not being helped by a number of Air Niugini’s
aircraft requiring service.
Yesterday, flight PX 960 (a Dash 8 aircraft) bound for Goroka had to
return to Port Moresby after the captain of the aircraft detected a
problem.
A passenger said Flight PX 960 that took off at 10.15am returned to Port
Moresby 30 minutes into the flight.
The airline said this was due to a component defect that developed after
the plane was airborne.
Air Niugini chief executive officer Wansantha Kumarasiri said the
captain in command had followed the standard operating procedures to do
an air-return.
He said the defect had been rectified by the engineers and the aircraft
became serviceable by 3.30pm the same day.
He said passengers for flight PX 960 to Goroka were then rebooked to
board with passengers for the afternoon flight on PX 962 that was
scheduled to depart at 4.15pm.
Last Thursday, officials from the National Development Bank heading for
Madang for the bank’s launching, had their flight diverted to Wewak.
Mr Kumarasiri explained that the flight to Madang was diverted due to
bats restricting night landing while in Wewak lights at the airport were
not in use.
“If we landed in Madang, we would not have been able to continue to
Wewak, while Madang did not have hotel accommodation available to
accommodate the passengers bound for Wewak,” Mr Kumarasiri explained.
Mr Kumarasiri added that it was every airline’s wish to deliver the
schedule service yet at times cancellation of flights were unavoidable.
He reported that the current fleets in service for domestic flights
consist of five F100, two Dash 8-300, three Dash 8-200 along with three
F28-4000 which were nearing retirement.
In another incident, there was a near fist fight over tickets among
passengers travelling to Mt Hagen yesterday morning as overcrowded
travleling passengers jostled for a seat at the Air Niugini terminal.
According to PX flight reservations, all flights into Mt Hagen from
yesterday up until Sunday are fully booked.
The same is the case for Goroka with the next available seat booking
reported to be Saturday afternoon, while flights to Mendi in the
Southern Highlands were also fully booked with an available flight
booking for Saturday morning and thereafter.
Wapenamanda in Enga province has no flight seats available until next
Thursday.
“In relation to Highlands region reservations, PX has already carried
out extra flights to meet the customer demand and also have arranged
additional flights. PX has also noted double bookings by customers on
various sectors and PX will respond to the demand as appropriately on a
daily basis,” Mr Kumarasiri said.
 
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