FOCUS on the positives and not the negatives.
This was the message from Attorney-General and Civil Aviation Minister Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum to people speculating about Fiji Airways’ decision to lease two Airbus A350 XWB aircraft.
“If you look at all of the airlines in the world, they all have what we call a leased financial arrangement,” he said.
“What that means is even a very large airline company will not actually go and buy the aircraft.
“They will not spend $15 billion and buy 20 aircraft.”
Fiji Airways A350s were leased from DAE Capital in Dubai.
The A-G explained that global airlines had a unique opportunity to work with financial companies that were equipped to purchase aircraft for them.
“The aviation industry is a very sophisticated industry. There are companies that specialise in providing these finances.
“So the airline goes and negotiates the price and then the airline works with what we call aviation finance companies that will provide the funds up front and we do repayments to them over a 10 to 15-year period.
“Most of the airlines across the world do that.”
Mr Sayed-Khaiyum said people who continued to talk about the national airline’s leased aircraft were unpatriotic.
“Unfortunately people who talk about this are very negative and we should really not pay any attention to it because a majority of Fijians are very proud of this achievement.
“I find it very unpatriotic that they choose to focus on the negative. Let’s choose to focus on the positives rather than the negatives.”
Meanwhile, Association of South Pacific Airlines secretary general George Faktaufon said while the decision to lease the A350s was good, he questioned the purchase of three Airbus A330 aircraft.
“In the long run, if you have the money it’s cheaper to own it but airlines nowadays don’t have cash,” he said.
“There is a lot of advantage to leasing because you don’t have to fork the money out up front.
“Airlines in the Pacific, we have no choice but to lease that’s why I couldn’t understand why Fiji Airways went and bought those A330s.”
