Air Nauru

Nauru Air Corporation, trading as Nauru Airlines (formerly trading as Our Airline and Air Nauru), is the flag carrier of the Republic of Nauru. It operates scheduled international services to other Pacific islands and Australia. Its main base is Nauru International Airport. Its head office is on the premises of Nauru International Airport, Yaren District and its operations office is in Brisbane in the Australian state of Queensland. In August 2014, the airline changed its name from Our Airline to Nauru Airlines.

History

Nauru Airlines was established as Air Nauru on 17 September 1969, and started operations on 14 February 1970.A brief flying history of Brisbane Airport
retrieved 2007-09-22. Regular scheduled services commenced after the delivery in January 1972 of the airline's first Fokker F28 Fellowship twin jet, which was followed by a second. A Boeing 737-200C was added to the fleet in 1975List of Boeing 737s operated by Air Nauru
retrieved 2007-09-22. and a Boeing 727-100 entered service on 16 June 1976. Later in the 1970s, the two Fellowships were sold and more Boeings were added to the fleet.

By 1983 the fleet included seven aircraft: two Boeing 727-100s and five Boeing 737-200s; since the entire population of Nauru at this time was about 8,000, the airline was in the position of having seating capacity equal to 10% of the Nauruan population. The airline had a bad reputation for cancelling flights at the whim of its government owners, including using the Boeing 727s for low-level searches for Nauruan fisherman lost at sea while relatives on board were served alcohol by the flight attendants."Micronesian Carriers to Stage a Comeback?" ''Australian Aviation'' magazine, No. 127, April 1997, p60-61. Aerospace Publications Pty. Ltd. ISSN 0813-0876. From this high point (at least in terms of fleet numbers) the airline gradually contracted in size, leasing some aircraft and selling others. In 1988, the fleet consisted of three Boeing 737-200s with the one remaining 727-100 leased out to Trans Australia Airlines. At this time the airline was badly affected by an industrial dispute with its pilots and was operating without a set timetable, a situation that lasted for several months.

In the early 1990s, an Air Nauru 737 was chartered to operate the Auckland-Niue route of Niue Airlines, the latter company's only service.

In 1993 two of the 737-200s were replaced by Boeing 737-400s, leaving the Boeing 737-200C to soldier on for a little while longer. The airline, by now only operating a single 737-400, was corporatised in July 1996 as the Nauru Air Corporation (NAC).

Mismanagement of the island's wealth and the resulting economic troubles caused the airline to lose large amounts of money, and on some occasions become insolvent. Its operations were also suspended for brief periods in the 1990s because of concerns raised by Australia over the airworthiness and safety record of its aircraft. Airline offices and equipment were also frequently repossessed by the Australian government for Nauru's repeated defaults on foreign loans. The airline became in dispute with the Export-Import Bank of the United States in 2002, and in December 2005 the High Court of Australia upheld an earlier decision to allow the bank to seize Air Nauru's only aircraft, leaving Nauru and the island nation of Kiribati without air services. The aircraft was seized by creditors at Melbourne Airport on 18 December 2005. Following the acquisition of a replacement aircraft (a Boeing 737-300) in mid-2006, the airline was rebranded as Our Airline and relaunched on 14 October 2006. Our Airline was renamed Nauru Airlines on 1 August 2014.

Nauru Airlines is now wholly owned by the state and had 65 employees in July 2012.

Destinations

Nauru Airlines serves the following destinations as of December 2023:

Historical destinations

Air Nauru once had a remarkably comprehensive network in the Asia-Pacific, with services to:

The average load factor throughout the network was only around 20%, with many flights carrying few or no passengers. The Nauru government subsidized the airline with profits from phosphate mining. Due to the phosphate reserves depleting in the early 1990s, along with the mismanagement of the island's mineral reserves, the airline began to cease services to unprofitable destinations.

Relaunch of services

Since relaunching services in 2006, the airline has repeatedly adjusted its route map. When the airline initially resumed services in 2006, it offered a twice-weekly service from Brisbane to Honiara, Nauru, Tarawa, and Majuro. These were quickly curtailed, with flights to Majuro eliminated. The Tarawa extension was suspended from July 2008 to November 2009 because, along with the high fuel prices of the time, operating the Tarawa flight was not profitable without a connecting destination. The Tarawa extension was suspended again in 2011 because of disputes, but it was resumed in early 2012. Meanwhile, Honiara service was suspended around the same time.

Although it had been reported in early 2007 that Our Airline would begin services between Nauru and Fiji in the very near future, the airline instead provided once weekly Tarawa to Nadi service on behalf of Air Kiribati beginning in November 2009. However, the service between Nauru and Fiji which began in 2010 ceased in December 2011 due to a dispute between the governments of Kiribati and Fiji. This was replaced with a bi-weekly direct flight between Nauru and Nadi, in Fiji.

As of December 2019, Nauru Airlines served four destinations from its base in Nauru: Brisbane, Majuro, Nadi, and Tarawa