NJS halts services to Christmas Island
NJS halts services to Christmas Island
JAKARTA (JP): The Darwin-based Australian airline National Jet
System (NJS) is to terminate all its services to Christmas
Island, a small Australian island in the Indian Ocean, next month
due to sinking demand.
One of the airline's managers, Debora Avory, told The Jakarta
Post yesterday that the last flight to Christmas Island would be
on Feb. 17.
The decision means there will be no scheduled flights to the
island from Jakarta after that date.
"There are reduced numbers of passengers to the island and we
don't want to lose money by keeping the service," Avory said.
She reiterated that a drop in demand had caused in the
significant reduction in passenger load on the route.
NJS currently links Jakarta and Christmas Island three times
per week and Singapore and Christmas Island twice a week. NJS
serves Jakarta-Christmas Island with BAe-146 aircraft.
Sempati Air, a domestic air carrier, stopped its service to
Christmas Island several years ago due to low demand. The 137-
square-kilometer Christmas Island, is about 3,000 kilometers
north of Perth and 500 km south of Jakarta.
Avory said that NJS would continue its Denpasar-Broome and
Lombok-Darwin services.
Christmas Island is popular with Indonesians as a resort there
owned by businessman Robby Sumampouw offers gambling, a form of
entertainment banned in Indonesia.
The resort's popularity has declined in the recent years due
to ineffective promotion.
Christmas Island Resort PTY Ltd., the parent company of
Christmas Island Resort has appealed to the Supreme Court in
Western Australia to appoint any party except Casino Austria
International to manage the resort in order to save the property
as well as hundreds of its employees.
The two parties were involved in a dispute after the number of
visitors dropped just a year after the resort opened in 1993. The
parent company blamed the operator for neglecting promotion and
maintenance, causing the resort to lose up to US$21.5 million by
last November. (icn)