Air Niugini to service Tari with four flights weekly

AIR NIUGINI is now servicing Tari, Southern Highlands, the hub of the natural gas project, with four weekly flights to allow for smooth international connections.
This comes after the flag carrier introduced another flight for Wednesdays on top of the three weekly flights into the area.
Air Niugini chief executive officer Wasantha Kumarasiri said the two main international destinations targeted by Tari’s additional flight were Narita (Japan) and Manila on the same day.
“We did not have that service earlier and we are hopeful that with this additional service we will have a good improvement to tourism as well as the liquefied natural gas project and other developments in the area,” he said yesterday in Port Moresby when he announced the new schedule.
According to the new schedule effective on July 1, there will be a total of 40 flights to Australian destinations, 16 flights to Asia and four flights to the Pacific.
The other change was for a Sunday flight from Port Moresby to Madang on top of the two existing; and Goroka retimed to 3.30pm to allow for more connection time for international services.
Kumarasiri said the retiming was after some individuals and corporate customers said their travellers could not get connections into Goroka after arriving from various international ports.
“This will allow better tourism and business travel connections.”
An additional Tuesday flight is on from Port Moresby to Mt Hagen, also effective on July 1.
“We are testing the ground and apparently we do twice daily service to Mt Hagen … we have seen increased number of activities.