Air Niugini CEO warns against unfettered competition

By Andrew Curran.

The CEO of Air Niugini says open-slather competition would be detrimental to the state-owned airline, saying the carrier lacked scale and wasn’t robust enough to handle it. Alan Milne told a business breakfast in Port Moresby this week that he was pro-competition but ensuring Air Niugini’s survival was a higher priority.

“Bring it (competition) on,” Papua New Guinea’s EMTV reports Milne telling the breakfast audience. “But we need it to be structured so it doesn’t sink us overnight – because it could.”

Papua New Guinea’s flag carrier operates 39 city pairs, including 27 domestic city pairs and 12 international city pairs. It competes with privately owned PNG Air on many of the domestic routes, and a very limited range of international carriers on the international routes.

Philippine Airlines competes with Air Niugini on the Port Moresby (POM) – Manila (MNL) route and Qantas competes with Air Niugini on the Port Moresby – Brisbane (BNE) and Port Moresby – Sydney (SYD) city pairs. Solomon Airlines recently suspended its short-lived flights on the Port Moresby – Honiara (HIR) route but plans to resume flying the sector in December.

In the meantime, Air Niugini enjoys sole-operator status on nine of its twelve international routes, including to major Asian hub airports such as Singapore (SIN), Hong Kong (HKG) and Tokyo Narita (NRT).

The only other international airline flying to Papua New Guinea, China Southern Airlines, operates on the Guangzhou (CAN) – Port Moresby city pair, a route Air Niugini does not service.

“(More competition) would be good for the consumer in the first instance from a ticket price perspective, but long term, it would be very damaging to Air Niugini,” Milne said.

“We’re not at scale enough or robust enough to cope with that sort of competition… I’ve been giving that message to the government as well.”

Artfully keeping Qantas close

Air Niugini’s biggest offshore competitive threat is Qantas. That airline has long maintained a presence in Papua New Guinea, primarily by running daily B737-800 flights on the Brisbane – Port Moresby route. Qantas quit the Cairns (CNS) – Port Moresby city pair in 2016 before briefly reinstating it in 2019. The airline also briefly resumed Sydney – Port Moresby flights over 2024/25, having quit that route decades earlier, but the reinstated service out of Sydney didn’t last.

But, reflecting ongoing interest from Qantas in the Papua New Guinea market, its Sydney – Port Moresby service is running again. Making a hugging gesture to the breakfast audience, Milne said he was maintaining tight relations with Qantas, a company he worked at for over three decades and doesn’t want to see back on the Cairns – Port Moresby sector.

“I’m holding Qantas very close at the moment,” he said, adding he was travelling to Sydney this week to talk to his former employer about cooperation, including potentially sharing an A220 maintenance facility at Cairns. Air Niugini currently flies ten A220-300-operated weekly round-trips on the Port Moresby – Cairns city pair.

“The last thing I want is for Qantas to put an A220 onto Cairns – Port Moresby and go head-to-head with us,” Milne said. “Cairns is borderline anyway. If Qantas were to bring their might in – they’ve got much deeper pockets than we do – we’d have to pull out, we wouldn’t last long at all.”

“That’s the impact that sort of competition would have on us. We just don’t have the deep pockets to sustain that kind of competitive behaviour for any length of time.”

Meanwhile, Air Niugini is minus both its B767-300ER aircraft, with one in Guangzhou for heavy maintenance and the other awaiting a replacement radar after striking a bat while landing at Port Moresby earlier this week.

Photo: Air Niugini
Contact the writer: andrew@aerosouthpacific.com