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Old Dec 27, 2015, 6:15 pm
  #8049  
WHBM
 
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: London, England.
Programs: BA
Posts: 8,476
Originally Posted by jlemon
52. Air Nauru is correct! And you've answered quiz item #43 as well. However, I'm not sure if the B727-100 flown on their weekly Taipei-Guam service was a combi (the OAG simply lists the equipment as a "727"). They may well have as I think they did indeed operate a 727-100C at one point. In addition to Boeing equipment, other aircraft in the Air Nauru fleet previously included a Fokker F.28-1000 and even a leased Dassault Falcon 20 which was flown in scheduled pax service.
Air Nauru in the 1970s-80s had the two 727QC's which originally belonged to Ansett and had been converted nightly to freighters running each way between the main Australian cities. They had a third 727, originally with Northeast, which was not cargo door fitted - this later passed to an African operator, had an interior fire, and was ferried to just down the road from me here, at Southend airport, where it sat on the ramp behind the big maintenance organisation there for many years, and you would expect it to be scrapped, but just a couple of years ago it was finally fixed up, at no mean cost, and sent back to Africa. I used to taxy past it, looking weather-stained and forlorn, when taking G-WHBM out for a little flight into there.

Air Nauru was a bizarre operator from a tiny mid-Pacific island country which came into rather too much money (from phosphate mines) and launched all manner of extraordinary and hardly-used (in some cases, apparently, not used at all) flights across the ocean there through other tiny island states. Behind the scenes it was operated as a contract operation by Ansett of Australia, with seconded management and flight crews. The only worthwhile operation was to Australia (the mines were also Australian managed), and if they had stuck with their original operation just to Brisbane using a business jet that would probably have suited fine most of their potential business. Eventually the phosphates ran out, and the national wealth with it.
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