Dili commercial air service resumes

Dili commercial air service resumes

DILI, East Timor (AFP): East Timor's first regularly scheduled
commercial air service was set to begin on Tuesday, a UN
spokesman said Monday.

Air North, of Australia, was to arrive in the territory's
capital Dili at 1:45 p.m. (0745 GMT) with a flight from Darwin,
northern Australia, Manoel de Almeida e Silva of the UN
Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) told
reporters.

The service was to begin about two weeks after UN officials
declared Dili airport open again for commercial traffic.

"We have been discussing and negotiating with various airline
companies ... but this is the first contract signed so far," de
Almeida e Silva said.

The airline will operate two flights daily except on Sundays,
he said.

Although Air North's service officially begins on Tuesday, the
airline has already been landing here for more than two months,
according to a travel agent in Darwin.

The agent said Air North had been operating three times a week
and charging A$700 for a return ticket between Darwin and Dili.

Since Sept. 20, Dili's airport has been a base for military
and humanitarian flights but if other aircraft flew in, military
air traffic controllers would allow them to land, Bill Townsend,
of UNTAET's aviation section, earlier told AFP.

Shortly after the airport officially opened for commercial
traffic on Jan. 3, a delegation from Merpati airlines of
Indonesia arrived in Dili to discuss resuming services to
Indonesia.

Until late August, when East Timorese voted for independence
from Indonesia, Merpati was the only company operating regularly
scheduled flights to East Timor.

That service was stopped in the violence that followed the
vote, when anti-independence militias went on the rampage in the
territory.

De Almeida e Silva also revealed that Westpac Bank of
Australia opened a branch in East Timor on Thursday, becoming the
second bank which had opened for business in the territory.

The small office is located in the Loro Sae Dili Hotel
building, formerly the Resende Hotel, where many UN workers live.
The office was closed Monday but a sign in the window said it
offered foreign exchange service on Thursdays and Fridays.

Westpac joins Banco Nacional Ultramarino, of Portugal, which
began operations in late November.

Indonesian banks which used to operate here were all destroyed
during the September campaign of arson and looting by militias
and their backers in the Indonesian armed forces.