Fiji Airways confirms money being lost in domestic routes

Despite this, Fiji Link continues to service the routes to serve those travelling
JYOTI PRATIBHA
NADI
Fiji Airways has stressed although the domestic airfares are perceived to be expensive, fact is its domestic subsidiary is losing money on this route.
Fiji Airways managing director/chief executive, Stefan Pichler, said: “In some cases when you compare them with international fares, they seem really expensive but our problem is that in domestic routes, we lose money.”
He highlighted that in the last financial year, their operating profit margin in the domestic network was negative two per cent.
“Despite this fact, in most cases we have not raised the fares and the fares has not been changed for the past two years and still we lose money,” he said.
Mr Pichler made these comments in response to the calls by Consumer Council of Fiji for Fiji Airways to relook at the domestic air fare pricing which it labels as exorbitant.
Mr Pichler said the reason they lose out money on these domestic routes was to some extent because of the infrastructure restrictions.
“For example Savusavu, we would love to fly with a bigger aircraft which will be much more economical but we can’t,” he said.
“This is because the runway is not long enough. And there are these problems in other areas as well. So the consumers are also stuck.”