Fiji Airways to cut costs by further 20%, boosts cargo ops

Fiji Airways (FJ, Nadi) will look to reduce monthly costs by a further 20% when global air travel improves, managing director and chief executive Andre Viljoen commented at a recent news conference, the Fiji Times reported on August 30. Although the carrier is preparing a Travel Ready campaign to lure international visitors back to the archipelago in a post-covid world, it will also have to get used to a “new normal.” “Things will not return to what they were pre-covid and we will enter a new normal, so we are preparing ourselves for that. One of our plans is to reduce our costs by a further 20% in the same way we managed to save USD40 million in costs last year,” he said. “We have appointed a dedicated team. We are taking every contract and we are looking at them and renegotiating them. The idea is to keep the programmes we have been running for the last few years and we are just going to heighten them and do even more.” At the same event, Fiji Airways chairman Rajesh Punja concurred that the company was anticipating a new normal in its future plans. “Simply put, future revenues will likely be significantly lower than pre-covid levels. Fiji Airways, like other prudent airlines, is already implementing steps to align with this future expectation,” he said. Meanwhile, Reserve Bank of Fiji governor Ariff Ali warned in a statement on August 27 that “the resurgence of infections in Australia and New Zealand will now further delay the resumption of international travel to Fiji and defer the return to some form of normalcy of tourism, our largest industry.” He added that despite progress in finding a coronavirus vaccine, “the persistence of the pandemic and the associated delay in the resumption of international travel is a significant downside risk to the [country’s] outlook.”