Fiji Airways, Managing Director & CEO, Paul Scurrah at the CAPA Airline Leader Summit Australia Pacific 2026

Transcript

Paul Scurrah:The current fuel crisis has been a drain on airlines all over the globe. It's affected some more than others. For us, we're fortunate in that being relatively isolated from the conflict, being close to our source markets, and having a reputation as a safe, family-friendly market has meant that on the top line and passenger interest level, we're doing very well. But like every airline in the world, we're paying way, way more for fuel than we were last year, and that has an impact. That impact has seen us go to our government and say, in order to keep flying at that maximum capacity we can, we're going to need some assistance to get through it. The government quite boldly has supported us through a number of mechanisms, including a hotel tourism turnover tax, which Nobody likes to go and ask people to weigh in like that, and I feel for them having to do so, but it will allow us to keep flying our maximum capacity even during the times when we're impacted by the fuel crisis. So from a fleet perspective, Fiji Airways has been through a recent modernisation programme. We have state-of-the-art A350s flying our long-haul product. We have 737 MAX 8s that fly our medium-haul into Australia and New Zealand. And they are extremely popular with our customers. So from here, it's just about maximising those, potentially looking at a refurbishment of our A330s in the coming years, and complementing and supplementing that in the next 2 to 4 years with 1 or 2 other aircraft. But we're really satisfied right now from a customer satisfaction point of view, and importantly, a sustainability perspective, that our fleet is really serving us well right now. The US is a really big market for us. It's a growth market. We're seeing renewed interest coming from US citizens holidaying in Fiji, but it's also becoming an increasingly popular transit point, Nandi, for Australians going to the US or US citizens going to Australia and New Zealand. So that gives us an opportunity to capitalise on the interest to stop over in Fiji and break the long haul up. have a couple of days by the pool drinking cocktails in Fiji before you go and do what you've got to do at either end. So Fiji and Nadi Airport in particular has the potential of being a big transit hub. It's seeing a lot of growth right now. There's a sensible investment plan in the infrastructure by Fiji Airports to make sure that we can handle whatever growth is coming our way now and in the future. So obviously we're very, very keen to make sure people see Nadi and Fiji as not just a hub for transit where you get off one plane and straight onto another, but a hub where you can get off and have a couple of days of R&R. Wow.

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