ON PROPOSED REGIONAL AIRLINE APIL agrees to create advisory council;

Leaders from Micronesian islands on Friday supported a proposed regional airline to improve air service to the Western Pacific, moving a step further with a concerted effort to immediately undertake feasibility studies intended to lay the groundwork for the plan.

Members of the Association of Pacific Island Legislatures (APIL) also agreed during their general assembly meeting on Guam to create an advisory council that will provide a direct link between airline companies and representatives of the regional body.

In an interview at the closing of the two-day conference, House Speaker Diego T. Benavente said a concrete plan on the regional carrier is expected to come out in September during an APIL meeting of its board of directors.

Although legislators from the region had deferred voting on two resolutions aimed at expediting the proposal, they stressed the urgency to push the establishment of unified air service in view of the downsizing of Continental Micronesia’s operations on the islands.

“Our actions are limited,” Benavente said, adding a committee report adopted at the start of the meeting last Thursday had called for more studies to back up the common carrier when the proposal is presented to any interested airline companies.

“We realize that this (study) is something that is going to be necessary for us to do,” he explained.

One of the resolutions offered at the meeting recommended the creation of the advisory council which was an idea pitched by representatives of Continental in a bid to enhance cooperation between the Guam-based carrier and the various governments in the region.

According to Benavente, APIL members believed that this council should also involve other airlines, not just Continental, to make it a more representative body dealing with the problems facing regional air transportation.

They also felt that the recent flight cutback by Continental to several islands could be attributed partly to the loss of equity by UMDA on the airline when leaders in the region had some decision-making powers.

“The creation of the advisory council would provide for a forum to discuss directly with Continental or any other airline in ways of improving their services to the community and also ways where we can provide for more sensitivity (on the needs of the) region,” the CNMI legislator said.

A regional struggle: The proposal on the regional airline has been a year-long battle by both leaders from the CNMI and other island governments, bringing up the issue in other fora, including the recently-held Asian-Pacific Parliamentarians’ Union where members include powerful countries such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the Philippines.

Last year, the APIL general assembly held on Tinian squeezed Continental for downscaling its operations in Micronesia at a time when the tourism industry — the main economic force for most islands — had been battered by the ongoing crisis in Asia, their main source of visitors.

Efforts to mend differences with the airline have also gone to naught in recent months as Continental continues to reduce the number of flights linking the islands to key Asian cities in a decision it has blamed on the shrinking passenger traffic to the region.

Micronesian governments, particularly the CNMI and Guam, have expressed worries that the company action may result to further loss in tourism revenues as direct links to their major markets are cut abruptly without any alternative carrier to bring in visitors.

The U.S. carrier, whose parent company is the Houston-based Continental Airlines, has been servicing the region for the last 30 years, with flights from Hawaii and other cities on the mainland as well as Tokyo, Seoul, Manila, Hong Kong and other Asian capitals.

But the prolonged economic meltdown troubling Asia has forced them to drop some of their flights and increase fares in major routes in order to offset company losses brought about by low passenger load.

So far, Air Nauru has expressed interest to fill in the void left by Continental and talks have been conducted between representatives of the carrier and officials of various island governments to draw up the plan of making them the regional airline.