Lonely Planet™ · Thorn Tree Forum · 2020

Tavenui to Nadi Flights?

Country forums / Pacific Islands & Papua New Guinea / Fiji

Hi just inquiring about the timing of the flights from Tavenui to Nadi. Do they run on time or are they Fiji time,
Need to make another flight to Sydney after our honeymoon on tavenui and have 4 hrs to spare. Just wondering if
anyone has taken this flight and if the timing is reliable?
Cheers,

We did this flight on SunAir last August.
We watched the plane arrive at the time ours was due to leave for Nadi and a few people ambled over to it and got on and it took off without anyone on the ground saying anything.
We saw our luggage still sitting on the trolley so assumed (correctly) that it was not our flight.
This happened a couple more times over the next hour or so and finally a flight arrived and our luggage was put on board so we ambled over to it and got on board.
The answer to your question is I guess they work on Fiji time and they are not too flash hot on announcements either.
It was a great flight when we were clear of clouds.
The flight to Taveuni was a bit closer to leaving on time.
I was concerned that we appeared to be going in the completely wrong direction after take off, I had imagined we would head down the Coral Coast and out over Suva but we headed up past Lautoka and along the top of Viti Levu instead of the bottom, also a great flight and we were very close to and overtook another aircraft over the straight.
The pilot was busy taking photos on his cell phone so was not sure if he had flown the route before but we got to Taveuni after a stop that I was unaware we would be making at another island on the way.

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it runs on Fiji time! Seriously you need more than 4hrs leeway!

When we took it we had 8 hrs leeway, the plane didn't arrive on Tavueni, no-one would tell us what was happening eventually after 5 hrs wait they put us on a plane to Suva where we were told we would have a connection to Nadi within the hour....more waiting and being ignored eventually after the checkin for our international flight had started they got us on a flight to Nadi. We were the last people to checkin and were seriously stressed. Thankfully we had left our luggage at the airport left luggage not at a hotel otherwise we would have never made the flight home! We found out days later when at home that two of the pilots hadn't bothered to show up for work.........

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