page_title: Nauru Airlines
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Nauru Airlines / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Nauru Airlines Boeing 737-300 (VH-XNU) at Nauru International Airport
context_page_description: Nauru Air Corporation, trading as Nauru Airlines is the flag carrier airline of the Republic of Nauru. It operates scheduled international services to other Pacific islands and Australia. Its main base is Nauru International Airport. Its head office is on the property of Nauru International Airport, Yaren District and its operations office is in Brisbane in the Australian state of Queensland. In August 2014, the airline changed its name from Our Airline to Nauru Airlines.
context_section_description: Nauru Airlines was established as Air Nauru on 17 September 1969, and started operations on 14 February 1970 with an experimental service between Nauru and Brisbane, using a Dassault Falcon 20 (a medium-size business jet) that was chartered from an Australian company. Regular scheduled services commenced after the delivery in January 1972 of the airline's first Fokker F28 Fellowship twin jet (a second Fellowship was subsequently placed into service as well). A Boeing 737-200C was added to the fleet in 1975 and a Boeing 727-100 entered service on 16 June 1976. Later in the 1970s the two Fellowships were sold and more Boeings were added to the fleet.
  By 1983 the fleet included seven aircraft: two Boeing 727-100s and five Boeing 737-200s; since the entire population of Nauru at this time was about 8,000, the airline was in the position of having seating capacity equal to 10% of the Nauruan population. The airline also had a bad reputation for cancelling flights at the whim of its government owners, including using the Boeing 727s for low-level searches for Nauruan fisherman lost at sea while relatives on board were served alcohol by the flight attendants. From this high point (at least in terms of fleet numbers) the airline gradually contracted in size, leasing some aircraft and selling others. Five years later in 1988 the fleet consisted of three Boeing 737-200s with the one remaining 727-100 leased out to Trans Australia Airlines. At this time the airline was badly affected by an industrial dispute with its pilots and was operating without a set timetable, a situation that lasted for several months.
  In the early 1990s, an Air Nauru 737 was chartered to operate the Auckland-Niue route of Niue Airlines, the latter company's only service.
  In 1993 two of the 737-200s were replaced by Boeing 737-400s, leaving the Boeing 737-200C to soldier on for a little while longer. The airline, by now only operating a single 737-400, was corporatised in July 1996 as the Nauru Air Corporation (NAC) headed by a new CEO without ties to the government, enabling it to operate independently in a commercial marketplace, free from most of its government constraints.
  In 1998 Air Nauru came under the regulatory control of the Civil Aviation Authority of Australia and since then has been a select foreign carrier holding an Australian Air Operator's Certificate (AOC). Mismanagement of the island's wealth and the resulting economic troubles caused the airline to lose large amounts of money, and on some occasions become insolvent. Its operations were also suspended for brief periods in the 1990s because of concerns raised by Australia over the airworthiness and safety record of its aircraft. Airline offices and equipment were also frequently repossessed by the Australian government for Nauru's repeated defaults on foreign loans. The airline became in dispute with the Export-Import Bank of the United States in 2002, and in December 2005 the High Court of Australia upheld an earlier decision to allow the bank to seize Air Nauru's only aircraft, leaving Nauru and the island nation of Kiribati without air services. The aircraft was seized by creditors at Melbourne Airport on 18 December 2005. Following the acquisition of a replacement aircraft (a Boeing 737-300) in mid-2006, the airline was rebranded as Our Airline and relaunched on 14 October 2006. Our Airline was renamed Nauru Airlines on 1 August 2014.
  Nauru Airlines is now wholly owned by the state and had 65 employees in July 2012.
caption: A pair of Nauru Airlines Boeing 737-300s at Nauru International Airport (February 2016)
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