Flight Centre scraps cheap Fiji holidays

By MARTIN JOHNSTON

Thousands of people planning a holiday in Fiji have had their bookings wiped by a cut-price operator.

Flight Centre, which began a price war with its deals starting at $399 for seven nights, yesterday scuttled the offer, blaming delays in obtaining the Fiji Government's approval.

Flight Centre managing director Graeme Moore said last night that the offer had been attractive and thousands of people had booked.

"We are now ... contacting all those customers affected to ensure they receive a full refund," he said.

They would also be given a $100 voucher for future travel.

The charter service, involving New Zealand's biggest chain of travel agents and aviation company Airwork, has been dogged by delays.

"Given that originally we expected to get this approval through before Christmas, we have got too far into the season to keep going with an unclear commencement date," Mr Moore said.

Take-off for the first of the charter flights was to be March 19, but last week that was postponed to April 9.

Mr Moore said New Zealand authorities had given their consent and it was thought Fijian approval would be straightforward.

"It now appears that's not the case. We can't actually tell how much further it will take before we can get the sign-off."

Flight Centre had no firm intentions to re-activate the scheme but "given the right circumstances we would look at this again".

Consumers Institute chief executive David Russell noted the refund, but said that intending passengers could claim for extra costs such as a deposit for a motel the night before leaving New Zealand if they lived far from the departure airport.

This would be under the Consumer Guarantees Act, he said, but the legislation did not cover intangible losses such as lost enjoyment.

Fiji's High Commissioner to New Zealand, Bal Ram, blamed the applicant's "incomplete documentation". His Government had asked for extra information.

Mr Moore said the only consolation was that the cheap deals had forced down the competition's prices for Fiji packages.

Air New Zealand's budget wing, Freedom Air, launched flights to Fiji as soon as Flight Centre announced its charter service. Last week, Freedom began taking bookings on a new Christchurch-Fiji service starting in May.

Freedom's Fiji holiday packages with House of Travel start at $499.

"We're selling them now and selling rapidly and we're very pleased with that," said Freedom general manager Wayne Dodge.

"We've got thousands of people on the books. Nothing changes for us."

He said Freedom's Palmerston North-Fiji flights were a resumption of a service that had been stopped because of political instability in Fiji.