Expedition Log

Day 4            Saturday, 14th January 2006

Leo took Dave Gill and I to the Airways Hotel near the airport which is where he had an apartment. We walked from there to Air Niugini Cargo at the airport to check the cost of sending the excess baggage as cargo. Domestic air freight was 5.83 Kina per kg to Rabaul plus30 Kina basic charge plus VAT making a total of 1315 Kina for 200 kg. We then walked to the Domestic Terminal to see the duty supervisor to see if we could arrange an extra baggage allowance for our flight to Rabaul and for our return home. They suggested we talk to Customer Services who then sent us to see Marco, the check-in supervisor in the Domestic Terminal. We explained the situation and told him that the expedition members were all divers and that we would need an excess baggage allowance of around 200kgs. He seemed to think that this would be no problem so we told him that we would be joined by the National Geographic photographers who would be travelling on the flight after ours and that they would also have excess baggage. He gave us the name of the marketing manager, Nori Maniana, and suggested we contact her at head office.

When we spoke to Nori she was very interested in the project and said she would try to arrange to get the excess baggage chage that had been levied in Singapore, refunded to us. We offered to write an article for the Air Niugini in-flight magazine.

Tom Chapman went to check out Brian Bell's Hardware. They have an outlet in Rabaul where most of the goods we required would be available.

The Journey to New Britain