Air Niugini ups Sydney flights, deploying A220 onto route

By Andrew Curran.

Air Niugini will increase its Port Moresby (POM) – Sydney (SYD) round-trips to three per week in early April and deploy its factory-fresh A220-300s onto the route.

The changes, reported by AeroRoutes, coincide with Qantas resuming services on the route.

Effective April 2, 2026, Air Niugini’s existing twice-weekly round-trips, currently operated on Fridays and Sundays, will be supplemented by an extra service on Thursdays.

Additionally, from March 29, 2026, Air Niugini’s brand new A220s will take over from the B737-800s currently operating on the city-pair.

Air Niugini’s A220-300 seats 138 passengers, including eight in business class and 130 in economy class. This is slightly smaller than the 144 passengers accommodated by the B737-800, but the additional weekly service adds another 252 seats per week on the city-pair.

Air Niugini now has three A220-300s, all arriving at the carrier in the latter half of 2025. They are part of a larger fleet renewal programme underway at the airline. Sydney becomes the second international destination (after Cairns (CNS)) that Air Niugini will serve with the aircraft.

Qantas has another go at making Sydney - Port Moresby work

Air Niugini’s upgraded Sydney service starts in the same week that Qantas has another crack at making the Sydney – Port Moresby route work. Qantas has long-standing historical ties to Papua New Guinea and has operated on the route before, most recently between April 2024 and February 2025. However, that short-lived service ended due to mediocre demand and a preference to deploy the operating aircraft onto more profitable routes.

This time around, Qantas is banking on demand generated by Papua New Guinea’s entry into Australia’s National Rugby League (NRL) competition. Qantas is the official NRL partner airline, and although the Papua New Guinea team are not entering the competition until 2028, already there is a connected increase in business and sport traffic between the two cities. Qantas is keen to capitalise on this.

The Qantas service will operate twice-weekly from March 30, and use 174-passenger B737-800s. Between Air Niugini and Qantas, an extra 948 seats per week will be put onto the Sydney – Port Moresby city-pair from April 2026 – an almost 40% increase on the current 576 seats.

In addition to Air Niugini’s Port Moresby – Cairns (CNS) flights, both Qantas and Air Niugini also fly to Port Moresby from Brisbane (BNE).

Photo credits: Air Niugini

Contact the writer: andrew@aerosouthpacific.com