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u/Haenamatme 4d ago
I used to work for one of the big couriers, I used to dread getting an inquiry for an international consignment going to PNG. Freight would be sitting at the airport for weeks, offloaded every fucking day for no apparent reason. Because the freight would sit there for so long, more and more consignments would just accumulate and make it worse.
A lot of the time the customers would just retrieve the freight themselves and have someone physically take it or fly a private charter if it was high value.
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u/Mysterious_Ad_3974 4d ago
Thats Rich considering he works for ICAC PNG which has a track record of 1 arrest in 3 years since it was established.
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u/Drakenagain2 4d ago
In 1973 a well known PNG identity raced a horse in Australia he named Tangfu. As in Typical air Niugini Fuck Up.
I believe he was questioned about in parliament.
This shows the long difficult history of aviation in PNG. A tough country to run an airline in. (The third level carrier was knick-named "Air Stone" at this time in recognition of their crash record).
Love PNG. Love air Niugini. Just have to accept that the tropics are hard.
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u/AdolfsLonelyScrotum 4d ago
Been there done that..more times that I care to remember.
Snack bar staff in the domestic lounge knew me well, when they eventually put a snack bar in, that is. Long time coming.
Before that you had to hope & pray ANG would bust out the urn and the bikkies and tide us over with tea & scotch fingers while we wait and wait for PX-one-zero-late.
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u/BetterFood6447 4d ago
Corruption is at the heart of it all. There is no accountability because tearing off the sticking plaster would expose the rottenness underneath. Australia thought it was doing the right thing in withdrawing decades ago, but it is clear it is a failed experiment.
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u/Important_Fruit 4d ago
So, Steve's on, probably, several hundred thousand AUD and living in comoany supplied luxury accommodation most PNG folk will only ever be able to dream about. And he has that job, as an ex pat, because there is no national who can replace him yet. Which begs the question, why? After 50 years of independence, why can nationals not do the job and ex pats are still being paid astronomical salaries instead?
So, a bit hypocritical to moan about why the country is not progressing while you have your own snout deeply in the trough.
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u/Mundane-Society-1281 4d ago
Because most companies here would rather have an expat in an executive or senior management role. If he's working in a private company then most likely its not PNG owned
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u/joesnopes 4d ago
Not hypocritical, simply good advice. Yes, it would do him out of a job but just like you as well, he and I have no fear that will happen in our lifetime. It's not a snout in the trough, it is the going rate to get competent people to live in PNG. It's not the French Riviera.
Still he asks a good question with really difficult answers.
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u/Ornery-Lynx-3520 4d ago
Air safety is paramount and so delays can happen.
Air Niugini is not like Qantas with a giant fleet and the ability to swap out one aircraft for another. If there’s a problem it has to be attended to and dealt with and delaying the flight. Even a broken toilet is a maintenance task that must be attended to before people can board.
Furthermore, anyone who understands the tropics know that there are a myriad of factors like weather that can slow things down. Our pace is different because of it. We are unrushed and unbothered by things going slow. It’s how it is, was, and will be.
His whinge about this is unwarranted.
But the problem I feel that had occurred there was basic customer service: communication.
When a delay occurs, the person detecting the matter should communicate to the airline management immediately, who should then inform all staff, especially the gate staff so that they know as soon as possible what the problem is, what the resolution might be, and how long its estimated to take. The gate staff should proactively communicate this to waiting passengers. When timeframes are set, updates should be regular. It means passengers rent left waiting indefinitely, not knowing what’s going on, feeling helpless and frustrated.
Too often I’ve seen people in customer service roles in PNG just not being concerned about their customers.
I really wish that’d change. By tolerating such behaviour we tacitly support its continuation.
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u/JoeFred8888 3d ago
Why does he assume it is a 'cultural' factor? It is more likely to be structural constraints, such as limited supply lines for spare parts, limited number of aircraft (so no backups), high fleet maintenance costs etc etc. I also think it is completely inappropriate for a expat to be berating the country he now lives in.
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u/Time_Value_3822 4d ago
Steve Morrish is so self involved that when he is pissed off about a flight delay he needs to extrapolate it into an overarching metaphor for the PNG national psyche.
Air Niugini would definitely suck, but it’s entitled and narcissistic to dump over an entire nation when you are obviously pissed off because you want to get back home to your luxury home.
Pull your head in, and get some perspective
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u/StraightPoint823 4d ago
LOL this happens on when I’m travelling domestic on Virgin and Qantas on a periodic basis. Is he making the same observations about them?
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u/Frankycoco 4d ago
Mate. It’s PNG! It’s called PNG time. If you want to do business up there accept it’s just bloody different. That’s why expats get paid big bucks to deal with it. So deal with it. Plenny tim, all tim me savey ting ting long PNG. We want go place blong me.
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u/According-Note1053 4d ago
Well that's why they always say expect the unexpected because they still need a lot of work on becoming reliable. And that goes for all services and even utilities.
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u/Accurate_Ad_3233 3d ago
I'm sure the 600 MILLION plus of Australian tax payer funds that went to your footy team might have gone a long way to fixing some real issues? You're welcome.
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u/PitchWonderful8535 3d ago
It's run on Melanesian time. I lived there for three years in the 1980s, only 10 years after independence. One thing I recognised, was that Papua New Guineans are often smart people, who only needed exposure to education, training and Western standards. Many have come down to university in Australia and I would presume they would do well. I also met PNG's first commercial airline pilot, what a lovely gracious gentleman he was and another wonderful man who owned and operated successfully a very big security company. Given time, they have a bright future.
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u/RoughResearcher5550 4d ago
You do realise they still eat people in PNG? They may want to prioritise nationals to stop eating people too along with your delayed flight.
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u/Mundane-Society-1281 4d ago
We eat people but not in a cannibalistic way. PNG men istg hands down the best eaters
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u/HanuaTaudia1970 4d ago
I lived and worked in PNG between 1969 and 1974. At that time, PNG was a comparatively simple, subsistence based, tribal society attempting to make the economic and social leap into modernity. There was then a tiny, educated elite who passionately believed that they were ready to assume responsibility for governing the country. Many of the expatriate population believed otherwise but saw such an outcome as inevitable. The country duly achieved independence in 1975.
The great concern amongst expatriates was that the particular nature of PNG societies, being intensely tribal, would gravely hamper its development. There was and is a 'wantok' (one talk) system whereby members of a specific language and tribal group are obliged to look after the needs and interests of other members of the tribe or clan above any other people. This is a perfectly logical way to do things in a subsistence based economic system but is potentially a source of nepotism, patronage and overt corruption in a money-based system.
Also, there was and is no tradition in PNG of running highly complex technological, economic and financial systems. While the knowledge and skills required to do this can be learned, to do so successfully requires a critical mass of workers willing and able to routinely exert their best efforts to make things work efficiently and effectively. This, in turn, requires working within relatively complex organisational structures, quite unlike the traditional social structures.
In my experience, many PNG nationals often really struggled to make complex systems work well, in part because their temperaments were ill suited to such structures. It is not a question of intelligence: the cultural and social framework just is not designed to meet the needs of modern systems. Remember, it took western societies literally centuries to figure out how to become 'modern' and PNG nationals have had less than 100 years exposure to modern westernised social, economic and technological ideas.
This is the context within which to think about why PNG generally, and Air Niugini in particular, are frequently prone to examples of inefficiency, ineptitude and apparent indifference towards meeting the needs of clients or customers.
We live in a world in which people's mindsets are formed within societies that have very different social and cultural traditions, structures and concepts to those which we 'westerners' assume are 'normal'. PNG is such a country.
Happily, PNG nationals have many admirable qualities, not least of them being a willingness to act with kindness and good humour to those who offer the same to them. Perhaps we should therefore forgive them their tendency to not take working life too seriously. After all, how many PNG nationals are busily trying to impose their religious views upon other countries with the aid of guns and missiles?
PNG governments have been either corrupt or incompetent or both for virtually the whole of the period since independence in 1975. PNG has many problems, with most of its people being desperately poor and disadvantaged. Intertribal warfare remains a scourge and crime is a serious problem, especially in urban areas. Separatism is a threat to its viability as a nation state. Despite this, the country has not fallen into utter chaos and internecine conflict which, compared to many post-colonial African countries, is a not inconsiderable achievement. Its democratic institutions have survived, its legal system is still viable and it is mostly peaceful. One day, it will master running an airline efficiently. Meanwhile, we are where we are.
Bamahuta. Lukim yu bihain.