Air Vanuatu

[luxury-lizard]

We're booked to fly SYD-VLI on April 14 - went to the Air Vanuatu website the other day to check our booking/seat assignment and there was a notice at the top of the home page stating that all Air Vanuatu flights to/from Australia and NZ were cancelled until April 8 as they were waiting for parts for their 737.

Now I am concerned about our fight (obviously a week later and not immediately impacted) - but does anyone know if it would be a good idea to book a 'backup flight' - the only reasonable option is Virgin via BNE but even a flexible ticket only refunds to the dreaded Travelbank. If we wait then the Virgin flight may be fully booked - our accommodation is already paid and non-refundable.

 

[AIRwin]

dreaded Travelbank

Why dreaded?

 

[dingogav]

See Flight Cancellation Advisory
Using Nauru Airlines aircraft!

 

[luxury-lizard]

Why dreaded?

Only because of 'stories' posted on AFF about difficulty redeeming/using airline credits with the possibility of such credits expiring. So, I agree, my comment re "dreaded" Travelbank was not based on any personal experience. (We are still struggling to use a huge credit from a cruise company from 2020 cancellations on their part).

 

[luxury-lizard]

Oh well - our fight tomorrow (14 April) was cancelled today (13 April) at 5pm. All I can say is avoid this airline at all costs - they only have one plane (737-800) serving OZ and NZ. It's too late to book Virgin via BNE - costs over $1100 pp and still would get us there a day late. We are currently re-booked on Air Vanuatu for Saturday at 19:30 arriving at midnight - basically 2 days of our pre-paid accomodation lost - that's if they actually fly on Saturday. SIGH

 

[tdimdad]

Only because of 'stories' posted on AFF about difficulty redeeming/using airline credits with the possibility of such credits expiring. So, I agree, my comment re "dreaded" Travelbank was not based on any personal experience. (We are still struggling to use a huge credit from a cruise company from 2020 cancellations on their part).

For future reference, the VA Travel Bank was surprisingly easy to use. One of the best things was the ability to use it as you wish, parts of the credits at a time (e.g. with a $1,000 credit you could book 4 * $250 flights over time). It's almost like having a pre-paid Visa/MC card.

QF travel credits were rigid and difficult to burn away and I'm not yet convinced of their Qantas Pass. Let alone stories from some other airlines.

 

[AIRwin]

For future reference, the VA Travel Bank was surprisingly easy to use. One of the best things was the ability to use it as you wish, parts of the credits at a time (e.g. with a $1,000 credit you could book 4 * $250 flights over time). It's almost like having a pre-paid Visa/MC card.

And it's not limited to payment for bookings only in one's own name...

 

[luxury-lizard]

Well back to Air Vanuatu (NL) - just arrived home from our short holiday in Vanuatu. I would have to rate NL as a 1 out of 10 - I promised Mr LL that I would never criticise Virgin again.

Our re-booked flight to VLI left Sydney about one hour late arriving VLI at 12:30am - after immigration, baggage collection and customs we finally arrived at our resort at 1:30am Sunday morning.

Air Vanuatu has "paused" catering - so all you got on this 3.5 hour flight is a very light snack (a meat pie in this case - which we refused) and tea, coffee or water - no soft drinks and no alcohol - a totally dry airline.

Return flight was not any better - left VLI 1.5 hours late (due to late arrival of incoming aircraft - which was 30 minutes late) - same catering - only instead of a meat pie there was a giant cookie and some soft drinks which were room temperature.

This airline is a serious drawback to tourism in Vanuatu - which is a really nice beach holiday destination.

 

[AIRwin]

VA has a Welcome to Vanuatu sale on:

Virgin Australia On Sale

Virgin Australia on sale. Check out the latest flight specials on offer. http://specials.virginaustralia.com/

specials.virginaustralia.com

 

[henrus]

VA has a Welcome to Vanuatu sale on:

Conspiracy theory hat on but why are VA still operating to Port Vila, I have a feeling there is some Australian government subsidy or some other mail/diplomatic/freight subsidy involved.

More recently and something I didn't notice pre covid (but could be wrong) but VA has had an engineer based in Port Vila, they hold a red asic card so clearly they're normally Australian based, in addition it appears since covid they haven't been taking on any fuel, water, emptying tanks or even removing rubbish which means plan lands, baggage/freight unloaded, new baggage loaded and that's it. There is no other ground handling except for some stairs pushed up (which by the way still have an Air New Zealand logo on them, Air NZ haven't operated to Vila since 2016 and there is still Air NZ signage /baggage sizers in the gate area).

In the starting weeks of the route coming back they also had outage of the scanners used for boarding so manual boarding meant writing down seat numbers leading to quite the process to generate departure paperwork (in the end our flight was delayed a good 50 mins due to this), in fact most days despite the arrival into Vila on time the departure is delayed due to the local ground handling agent struggling with the turn around.

 

[docjames]

I'm sorry for those whose travel was interrupted. It's always annoying, disappointing and inconvenient (and sometimes expensive too).

Just to put some food for thought out there, Vanuatu is a relatively poor and small country. Personally I think airline expectations should be in keeping with that reality. There is a reasonable basic expectation of safety, but redundancy, parts availability etc are all impacted by ability to "carry" extra cost. Noting that tourism is an important revenue stream so balance that off (unavailable aircraft

GDP by Country - Worldometer

Countries in the world ranked by Gross Domestic Product (GDP). List and ranking of GDP growth, GDP per capita and couuntry share of World's GDP

www.worldometers.info

The wiki page is out of date but note aircraft were provided at one stage by Qantas, who obviously have much greater resources / ability to swap aircraft than an independent Air Vanuatu.

Air Vanuatu - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Note also runway issues previously (not sure current status) - may be why an engineer is kept on site for VA. May also be why QF don't want to send aircraft there (or its purely availability of frames / a financial decision).

Major airlines suspend Vanuatu flights over airport runway concerns

A deteriorating runway has lead to Qantas, Air New Zealand and Virgin Australia suspending flights to Vanuatu capital Port Vila

www.theguardian.com

 

[henrus]

Just to put some food for thought out there, Vanuatu is a relatively poor and small country. Personally I think airline expectations should be in keeping with that reality. There is a reasonable basic expectation of safety, but redundancy, parts availability etc are all impacted by ability to "carry" extra cost. Noting that tourism is an important revenue stream so balance that off (unavailable aircraft

Air Vanuatu's pilots are majority Australian (I think there might be one or two from NZ/Europe in their small pilot base as well). Both cabin and flight crew training is still done by Qantas with a mixture of support from carriers across Asia.

When the aircraft is on the ground in Australia Qantas provides some maintance support with the 737 flown to Hong Kong for maintenance by HAECO, additionally when parts are required these are either sourced from Qantas or flown down from Hong Kong. For reference HAECO is the same company that provides Hong Kong based maintenance for Virgin Australia, United, Finnair, Lufthansa and Cathay with Air Vanuatu's 737 undergoing a full C check there late last year.

The wiki page is out of date but note aircraft were provided at one stage by Qantas, who obviously have much greater resources / ability to swap aircraft than an independent Air Vanuatu.

When Air Vanuatu's aircraft is in maintance even in more recent times they've wet leased a Qantas 737 or more commonly Air Nauru 737's. The most recent lease has been Air Solomon's A320, personally I'd see older Air Nauru 737-300s and Air Solomon's A320 a great risk or breaking down etc.

Note also runway issues previously (not sure current status) - may be why an engineer is kept on site for VA. May also be why QF don't want to send aircraft there (or its purely availability of frames / a financial decision).

At the moment runway is in rather good condition, the whole runway problems only lasted a few months and was resolved by the world bank providing urgent funding to get it back up to standard. I get the impression the VA engineer on the ground is to make sure the flight can get away if there was a problem. On the several flights I've watched they've added covers over airspeed intakes, done walk arounds and helped with paperwork.


I actually think the largest problem with Air Vanuatu is the financials of the aircraft. In 2022 they nearly had it repossessed and when delays or other problems occur this means mounting costs which can cause further impacts to the aircraft.

 

[muehli3]

I'm really curious how our trip will be given your experiences

We're flying in August, booked as reward seat Sydney to Port Vila, which turned out to be a NF flight, so I guess no chance to use a lounge invitation?

Anyone experience with Air Vanuatu business class? We got a deal for the flight back (Port Vila - Sydney - Melbourne) and I was wondering what to expect in their Business Class.

 

[AIRwin]

Anyone experience with Air Vanuatu business class? We got a deal for the flight back (Port Vila - Sydney - Melbourne) and I was wondering what to expect in their Business Class.

This was a review before the pandemic:

Airline review: Air Vanuatu Boeing 737 business class, Port Vila to Melbourne

This is closer to what other airlines would call premium economy.

www.smh.com.au

 

[muehli3]

Thanks, sounds OK, roughly what I've expected.

 

[openseat]

When Air Vanuatu's aircraft is in maintance even in more recent times they've wet leased a Qantas 737 or more commonly Air Nauru 737's. The most recent lease has been Air Solomon's A320, personally I'd see older Air Nauru 737-300s and Air Solomon's A320 a great risk or breaking down etc.

Solomon Airlines A320 was delivered to Freedom Air in 2005, so younger than some Qantas 737s and certainly younger than the very old Air Nauru 737.

 

[henrus]

Solomon Airlines A320 was delivered to Freedom Air in 2005, so younger than some Qantas 737s and certainly younger than the very old Air Nauru 737.

Having a look I’ve flown on it back when it was operating for Air NZ.

That being said I’ve just noticed Solomon Airlines has acquired an ex Jetstar A320 that’s about 10 years old.

It’ll be interesting to see if this is a replacement for the existing one or in addition given how much flying Solomon airlines is doing for other carriers like Air Vanuatu.

 

[openseat]

Solomons Airlines are still to return to pre COVID service levels. They haven’t restarted the BNE Munda service nor the HIR to Kiribati service. The latter was an important link for the Gilbertese who live in the Solomons. At the moment they have to fly via Fiji where they are price gouged by FJ.

I wasn’t aware of the purchase of the Jetstar plane. Maybe they want to link into Asia somewhere with an expanded fleet.

 

[Harrison_133]

It’ll be interesting to see if this is a replacement for the existing one or in addition given how much flying Solomon airlines is doing for other carriers like Air Vanuatu.

It’s in addition to the existing aircraft. They want to capitalise on traffic for the upcoming Pacific Games and more seasonal charter work. Also increased operational resilience, and less reliance on other companies during disruption (e.g. Nauru Airlines). In addition to the Air Vanuatu partnership, they also talk about branching out to countries like Tonga or Samoa that currently lack a national carrier.

There’s a few articles floating around about it, but the one below gets the general gist of it:

Solomon Airlines in talks for second A320

Solomons - Solomon Airlines (IE, Honiara) is looking to secure a second A320-200 to capitalise on demand for travel to Honiara for the 17th Pacific Games later this year. Solomon Airlines CEO Gus Kraus told the Solomon Islands Broadcasting Commission that a letter of intent (LOI) had been...

www.ch-aviation.com

 

[muehli3]

Quick update on our flight from Sydney to Port Vila
- Friendly staff
- 45min late due to previous flight being late. Good that we planned our onward travel only after midday.
- Basic, I guess I cannot describe it better don't expect too much.
- Food: See image, in addition to water they served coffee, tea and juice.

Next update after our flight back next week in Business.