Pele Island in Vanuatu is a short boat ride from the main island, but many outer islands require a flight unless you have endless time

Island Hopping Through Oceania: Cancelled flights, altered schedules, civil unrest, and liquidation

Island hopping through Oceania is a logistical challenge at best. Coming up with a feasible route took multiple attempts. But once we had the route nailed down, the next question was how much to book in advance.

In the end, to keep airfares low, we decided to book all our flights in advance: 26 flights with nine different airlines. Given the unreliability of some of the operators, we were fully expecting some changes along the way.

But not before we’d even set out.

Planning this trip required countless hours of research

The cancelled flight

The first domino to fall was towards the end of our journey, our flight from Palau to Papua New Guinea. A relatively new route with Air Niugini, it was subsidised by the Australian government to aid Pacific connectivity. Backed by the Aussies, we figured it would last despite its obscurity. But we weren’t reckoning with Air Niugini’s dysfunction.

To get things back on track, we just needed a simple switch from our cancelled flight to a Manila to Port Moresby flight and an adjustment to our internal flight schedule. We figured it would be a simple phone call to sort it out.

But this is Air Niugini.

So after painstakingly giving the lady on the phone all our booking details – ‘M for mother, S for ship…’ she laconically advised us to email our request.

The only response we received from Air Niugini was over a week later, generically stating that ‘your ticket has been resolved’ but without any form of resolution. We repeated this process a few more times, at one point being asked via email to ‘kindly do a follow up on Monday’ to remind them to deal with our request.

We did remind them. Since then, we’ve had roughly weekly correspondence with an Air Niugini travel consultant named Kena Wano. We make specific requests, and Kena responds with ‘well noted’ or undecipherable airline coding.

At least it’s close to the final leg of the journey; we’ve still got a few months to spare for our budding relationship with Kena.

The changed schedule

So it turns out that Air Niugini dropped the Palau route just for Nauru Airlines to pick it up. Now, Nauru Airlines flies direct from Brisbane to Palau weekly. Cue a schedule change from Nauru Airlines; our flight from Fiji to Nauru moved forward by a not-insignificant 48 hours.

That would be fine, except we had planned to meet with our good friend Maggie in Fiji. Where we’d booked two nights of luxury (likely the only two nights of luxury on the whole trip) before we were due to fly out to Nauru. And now that had been wiped out.

Thankfully, Nauru Airlines isn’t Air Niugini, so pushing the flights back took one simple email. This worked in our favour; we now have more time to explore Fiji and less time in Nauru, where you can walk the perimeter of the whole island in roughly four hours.

The civil unrest

At least our flights with Air Niugini and Nauru Airlines were booked for later in the trip. Not so with our flights to Vanuatu, which are scheduled to connect through New Caledonia.

So when Noumea, the capital of New Caledonia, erupted in a fit of violent rioting in early May, we were slightly more concerned. But only slightly. A French overseas territory with a reputation in New Zealand for upmarket tourism, it seemed like a safe bet that things would settle down quickly.

Noumea, New Caledonia. Image Source: The Diplomat. "Smoke rises during protests in Noumea, New Caledonia, May 15, 2024," 2024. Accessed Via https://thediplomat.com/2024/05/whats-behind-the-deadly-riots-in-new-caledonia/.

But then they didn’t. Macron visited, and dialogue was set up between different groups, but the airport remained closed, and flights were grounded. As our flight date approaches, the airport has resumed limited flights. However, protesters’ barricades still block the highway from the airport into the city, and all arrivals need to be transferred from the international airport to the city on small domestic flights.

This means there are currently only one or two international flights landing daily, and our flight to Port Vila, in Vanuatu, doesn’t look like a priority. The only feasible alternative involves a transfer through Auckland, so we might be heading back to New Zealand a few years earlier than we expected.

The liquidation

And then there’s Air Vanuatu. Which went into liquidation on the 9th of May. And yes, we do have flights booked with them. Rather unfortunately, we also have flights with Solomon Airlines that we had booked through Air Vanuatu. And yes, we’ve confirmed, they’re not currently valid for travel.

But we figured a scattered island nation, linked predominantly by internal flights and dependent on tourism, couldn’t last too long without an airline. And we had over a month until we were due to fly with them.

But then nothing happened—except we received an email stating that our flight from Port Vila to Luganville had been changed to a flight from ‘Fictitious Point to Fictitious Point’.

So we’re starting to accept that we’re not going to see the nanggol, or land-diving (the precursor to bungee jumping, where the tribesmen on Pentecost Island jump from wooden towers with forest vines tied to their ankles to ensure a good yam harvest), and that we’ll need to rebook our Solomon Airlines flight from Port Vila to Honiara (but direct with Solomon Airlines this time).

And all before we’ve even left New Zealand, so much for booking in advance.