Outgoing Managing Director and CEO of Air Pacific John Campbell has today confirmed that Fiji's international carrier, Air Pacific is expected to record a substantial loss for the financial year 2009 to 2010.
Campbell said this is largely due to the severe flooding in 2009, the devaluation of the Fiji dollar as they had to purchase goods and services from abroad and also discount in air fares because of competition in the market, but they have strategies in place to counter that.
Campbell said the biggest challenge now is the competition from the other airline companies providing services to Fiji.
Meanwhile as Campbell gets ready to leave Air Pacific, he said over the past 9 years a number of positive developments have taken place that has benefitted Air Pacific and the tourism industry as a whole. He said one of key issues is that the total passengers carried by Air Pacific has doubled over the last 9 years, in 2001 airline company carried just over 415 thousand passengers but the total passengers in a year now stands at over 1 million.
Campbell said he is not renewing his contract as he has been in the business for a longtime, and they are about to introduce Boeing 787 services, and he feels that they need someone new to take over the role. Campbell adds that the Boeing 747 was introduced in 2001 when he arrived in Fiji and that has brought in a lot of tourists to the country.
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Air Pac expects substantial loss
