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Pacific Islands Table of Contents
The Kingdom of Tonga, the only monarchy in the Pacific, has had its leased Boeing 757 aircraft repossessed by Royal Brunei Airlines. Service, which had been maintained since November 2002, was stopped on Friday, April 23, 2004. The cessation of service was inevitable; fuel suppliers, other airlines and travel agents had recently been insisting on cash payments. Warwick Hawker, the High Commissioner for New Zealand in Tonga, told Radio New Zealand, "The airline had not been getting the loadings needed to survive." Politician Akilisi Pohiva told the AFP News Service that the collapse of the airline represented a "real disaster for Tonga." There are several reasons for the poor load factors. Tonga is off the beaten path. It is not anywhere near flight paths that join world-class city pairs. In contrast, Fiji, which is about four hundred and fifty miles northwest of Tonga, lies on a direct route between Sydney and Honolulu. For the Government of Tonga to attempt to run an international airline has in retrospect been a vain decision. This is highlighted by the fact that the majority of the passengers were Tongan, which indicates that the airline was unsuccessful in penetrating the market. Royal Tongan Airline could not compete against Air New Zealand, Air Pacific or Polynesian Airlines. Due to geography, Tonga has good tourism potential but only on a modest scale. Air New Zealand has offered special one-way fares for passengers stranded by the shutdown of Royal Tonga Airlines. Many passengers have already taken advantage of the fare offer. Passengers holding tickets for homeward flights on Royal Tongan Airlines must present their RTA ticket to access these fares. Another factor contributing to the demise of the airline is highlighted by Julie Middleton of the NZ Herald, who reports that Ivana, a New Zealand born Tongan, had boycotted Royal Tongan Airlines because of the ban on newspapers and broadcasters that were seen to be unsympathetic to the Government or the Royal Family. The main bone of contention of expatriate Tongans is the treatment of Te Taimi o Tonga, a Tongan language newspaper, which is published twice a week in Auckland, the de facto capital of Polynesian culture. The insistence on the ban by the Government of Tonga led to the resignation of Chief Justice Gordon Ward of the Supreme Court of Tonga. Justice Ward had repeatedly declared the ban unconstitutional. According to the Matangi Tonga, Tonga's news magazine, the airline problem has been further aggravated by a political reaction from the public following a call to boycott the airline when government pushed ahead and ignored the Constitution and passed legislation to control Free Speech and the Freedom of the Press. It is evident that a combination of two factors led to the shutdown of the airline: a flawed business model and marketing problems brought on by government intransigence.
The copyright of the article Tonga at the Crossroads in South Pacific Islands is owned by . Permission to republish Tonga at the Crossroads in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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