By Staff Writer
The Faleolo International Airport (FIA) working buzz is picking up again, close to 2-months since the COVID 19 health restrictions lifted on international travel.
Returning Samoans and New Zealand visitors made up more than half of the 9 thousand 5 hundred arrivals who brought the terminals back to life in the first month of re-opening last August.
The travel ban brought the airport to a virtual standstill for close to 2 years except when special flights fly in returning Samoans stranded overseas.
“Back then we would be lucky to back $3 or $5 tala in our daily banking’s,’ a Samoa Airport Authority senior official who did not want to be named told Newsline Samoa.
The Authority’s bank accounts are reportedly humming again to the happy tune of between $10k – $20k deposits of up to a week since FIA re-opened.
Most of the flight landings now are by Air New Zealand and Fiji Airways, flying in full flights of mostly overseas based Samoans visiting families at home.
The national carrier Samoa Airways is unable to service the busy international travel market without any aircraft.
Political acrimony from the bitter fallout of the 2021 general elections has handicapped Samoa Airways efforts to tap into the multi-million tala international travel market without an operating aircraft.
The tourism industry was second only to overseas money remittances as the leading source of income for the national economy before the health lockdown.
The local hotel industry has taken the brunt of the revenue loss from the COVID travel holdup without flights allowed on international travel.