Air Niugini Limited is the national airline of Papua New Guinea, based in Air Niugini House on the property of Port Moresby International Airport, Port Moresby. It operates a domestic network from Port Moresby to 12 major airports while its subsidiary company, Link PNG, operates routes to minor airports. It also operates international services in Asia, Oceania, and Australia on a weekly basis. Its main base is Port Moresby International Airport, which is located in 7 Mile, Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. Niugini is the Tok Pisin word for New Guinea. History The airline was established in November 1973 as the national airline of Papua New Guinea with the government holding 60% of the shares, Ansett (16%), Qantas (12%) and Trans Australia Airlines (TAA) (12%). It started as an exclusively domestic carrier; however it expanded to offer international services shortly thereafter. In founding the airline, the government aimed to encourage regional development in a country without an extensive road network. The airline was established using DC-3 and Fokker F27 aircraft. In 1975 when PNG gained independence, pilots from the two airlines operating for the government were from Ansett Australia and Trans Australia Airlines. The majority of these pilots elected to return to these companies and continue their careers in Australia. This left a huge shortage in the pilot strength (over 95%) and consequently replacements were recruited from both Australia and New Zealand. These pilots had little or no experience in airline operations and few if any skills or experience operating in the extremely hostile environs of PNG. Nonetheless, they were trained by the outgoing pilots from Ansett and TAA and with the first class training behind them continued to provide safe and reliable services to all of PNG. When Air Niugini took over the international routes - then operated by Qantas - once again the senior pilots were called upon to convert from basic turboprop aircraft (F27) to B707-338C 4-engine jet aircraft. Considerable alarm was expressed that these "jungle pilots" could not possibly operate large jet aircraft hitherto flown by Qantas flight crews. Again with excellent training and support from Qantas, the PX crews converted successfully to the venerable B707 and from there took over all the check and training on those two aircraft and continued thereafter to the various replacement aircraft being primarily A300-B4, A310-300, B757 and B767. There were two crashes internally on the domestic operation with the