CASSIDY INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

About Cassidy International Airport

The airport is served by Fiji Airways from Nadi, Fiji and Honolulu, United States, but not during the COVID-19 pandemic and closure of international borders. Since neither Air Kiribati nor Coral Sun Airways owns aircraft capable of flying between Kiritimati and the Gilbert Islands, where all other operational airports in Kiribati are located, there are no domestic flights from there to or from Kiritimati, but only domestic flights between the three main Line Islands.

However, Coral Sun Airways declares on its website that the company is considering purchasing a larger aircraft, capable of flying to the Line Islands and the Phoenix Islands.

History

During World War II, the United States Army Air Forces Air Transport Command used the airport as a refuelling stop on its Pacific transport route from Hawaii to Canton Island for flights to Australia and New Zealand as well as a staging point for attacks on the Gilbert Islands, then partially occupied by Japan. The airport was expanded considerably during the war, and the World War II runway configuration can still be seen as abandoned runways and aircraft parking areas in aerial photography.

By 1981, Air Tungaru, the former national airline of Kiribati, was operating nonstop Boeing 727-100 jet service to both Honolulu and Tarawa as well as nonstop flights to Papeete, Tahiti with this latter service being operated in conjunction with Union de Transports Aeriens (UTA), a French airline. In 1994, Air Nauru was flying Boeing 737-200 jet service to Honolulu and Tarawa with the latter flight operating same plane direct service to Nauru. During the early 2000s, Aloha Airlines operated nonstop Boeing 737 service to Honolulu.

Name

Cassidy International Airport was originally named after a United States Army World War II pilot, Wilbur Layton Casady, whose plane crashed near the island on 23 March 1942. The name remained until sometime in the 1980s and was referenced in many books and a Sports Illustrated article on fishing in Kiribati. It is unclear when the spelling changed, but it now uses the spelling 'Cassidy' International Airport.

Facilities

The airport is at an elevation of 5 ft. (1.5m) above mean sea level. It has one runway designated 08/26 with an asphalt surface measuring 2,103 by 30 meters (6,900 ft. × 98 ft.)

Air Pacific service

On 29 August 2008, Air Pacific (now Fiji Airways) announced they would suspend flights to and from the airport as of 2 September 2008. The decision was made due to the deteriorating surface of the runway which had been deemed unsafe after an inspection by Air Pacific personnel and specialist runway engineers. Service resumed on 25 May 2010. During the period Air Pacific was not offering its services to Fiji and the United States, a USA company, Te Mauri Travel, offered "interim" charter flights to Kiritimati.

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