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| Photo taken from the internet - Owner unknown |
When I got sent information from a friend regarding this new potential airline for Brisbane, I thought, I hadn’t heard of this airline before. Air Kiribati is based in Kiribati which is a state in Micronesia located in the South Pacific Ocean. The permanent population of Kiribati is just over 110,000 (as of 2015), more than half of whom live on Tarawa Atoll. The state comprises 32 atolls and reef islands and one raised coral island, Banaba. They have a total land area of 800 square kilometres (310 square miles) and are dispersed over 3.5 million square kilometres (1.3 million square miles). The airline was established and started operations on the 1st April 1995, after the collapse of the previous national airline Air Tungaru. In March 2004, Air Kiribati ended its international operations. It is 100% owned by the government of Kiribati. In 2017, the Airline took ownership of a Dash 8 100 series to undertake domestic and short haul international services. The airline is extremely small with a fleet size of only 5 aircraft and 29 routes. The airline will expand it’s fleet as they ordered 2 brand new Embraer E190-E2 aircraft which they will take delivery of sometime this year.
Current fleet
The Air Kiribati fleet consists of the following aircraft (December 2018):| Aircraft | In Service | Orders | Passengers | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Harbin Y-12 IV | 3 | 0 | 17 | |
| De Havilland DHC-6-300 Twin Otter | 2 | 0 | 20 | (as of August 2019) |
| Bombardier DHC-8-100 Dash 8 | 1 | 0 | 37 | (as of August 2019) |
| Embraer 190-E2 | 0 | 2 | TBD | To be delivered in 2019. |
The airline has been eyeing off Australian services with this aircraft for some time and Brisbane was one of the focus airports. Well, it looks like the airline has now chosen where they’d like to operate from. Air Kiribati has applied for permission and authorisation to start services from Brisbane to Tarawa via Honiara and Nauru which they would like to start on the 11th of March 2020 and operate twice weekly. The airline will operate the following return flight: Tarawa to Nauru to Honiara and finally, Brisbane. The airline will obviously be using their new Embraer's on the route once they take delivery of them.
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