The liquidation of the national airline has resulted in a major loss of more than 1 billion vatu for Airports Vanuatu Limited (AVL).

Chief Executive Officer of Airports Vanuatu Limited, Jason Rakau, confirmed to VBTC News that Air Vanuatu owes AVL more than 100 million vatu over the past five years.

In 2022, when borders reopened, the liquidation of Air Vanuatu occurred.

“When we reopened the borders in 2022, we were looking forward to COVID recovery, but another disaster came that impacted us, which was the liquidation of Air Vanuatu,” Mr Rakau said.

“Airports Vanuatu lost a large amount of money owed by Air Vanuatu as a result of the liquidation. This was another major loss, amounting to hundreds of millions of vatu over three to five years, including COVID and 2023 when the liquidation happened.”

The challenges of COVID-19 also contributed to the five-year loss.

“We went through some challenging years starting from 2020 to 2024. From 2020 for three years we experienced COVID. We may want to forget it, but we must acknowledge that it had a major impact on how Airports Vanuatu operated. This was not only in Vanuatu but also with international borders,” Mr Rakau said.

“In terms of Air Vanuatu operations, it affected Airports Vanuatu’s operations through reduced revenue collection needed to run operations and carry out developments, which had to be put on hold just to survive during the years,” he said.

“Airports Vanuatu needs fees when people travel to generate revenue so it can invest in its business.”

“The past years were very challenging, but we tried our best with limited resources to ensure safe operations continued and that we remained financially stable as a business.”

Mr Rakau said the focus for 2026 is to recover the losses, similar to the strong revenue years of 2018 and 2019.

After the liquidation, two airlines took over the space previously occupied by Air Vanuatu.

Currently, there are seven international airlines servicing Port Vila.