Airline PNG will be replacing all its aircraft with ATR 72-600 planes.
Chairman Murray Woo revealed this today during the company’s annual general meeting.
Woo said the ATR 72-600 aircraft would be the only carrier in the country servicing all major ports in the domestic market with “new, efficient, highly reliable, state of the art aircraft’’.
“That will allow the airline for the first time to offer what is clearly the premium product on domestic routes.
“We expect to have 3 brand new ATRs operating by February 2016 and 7 by December 2017.
“After that the plan is to replace all our Dash 8s and become a 100% ATR operator by 2020,” he said.
He said the ATR is the only aircraft in production that can fly to all major ports in PNG.
“ATR have invested heavily to make their product by far the most widely chosen regional turboprop aircraft around the world.”
From the company’s perspective, Woo said the key points are that:
- We will be replacing 25 year old aircraft with brand new aircraft;
- those new aircraft have lower operating costs overall than our existing fleet and much lower operating costs per seat;
- they will also be much more reliable, have greater capacity and will allow flexible freight and freight/passenger combinations.
Meanwhile from the passenger’s viewpoint, Woo said the ATR is bigger, more comfortable and faster than their current planes.
He said “As the airline will be the only one operating the ATR in PNG, and for that matter the only one operating any new aircraft type, the board believes it will give the airline a significant competitive advantage into the future.”