How does one travel around the Solomon Islands when not on a liveaboard? Between some islands you can take ferries, but this takes all day and often involves multi-day weather delays. So Solomon Airlines is the preferred option.

When booking Solomon Airlines from the US, you'll probably assume it operates similar to US airlines, making some allowances for it being small. On their website you can search the schedule and buy tickets in different fare classes (Economy or Economy Flex) in Australian dollars. If there's no non-stop route between your desired locations, it will happily show you connecting options. But then you'll start getting emails about schedule changes, so many that you'll just ignore them until the day before your flight when you actually need to decide when to show up at the airport.

But here's the thing, Solomon Airlines is not really a regularly scheduled airline. It's much more like "your buddy's casual ride service with a few planes”. Six planes to be exact. The times listed on your reservation? Those are only suggestions. The route listed on your reservation? That can change on a whim. The extra baggage fees they promise to levy if you exceed the designated weight? Don't even worry about those.

We arrived into Honiara (the capital) from Fiji via Air Niugini (Papua New Guinea's national airline), so our first experience with Solomon Airlines was getting to Uepi. Our flight from Honiara to Uepi's local airport of Seghe was uneventful, so we were lulled into a false sense of normalcy. Our assigned seats were 1A and 1B, the first row of 16 in the little twin otter prop plane. Andrew loved this as it meant he had literally a front row view to the cockpit, and giddily watched the (modern glass) instruments from just inches behind the captain and first officer. Behind them Vera noticed the light-up "non-smoking" sign was hanging by its wires. 

But the flight was gorgeous and we landed smoothly on the beautifully paved runway at Seghe that jets out into the coral reef.

Upon landing, the airport staff person (who had just signaled us in) started unloading bags, placing them directly on the runway next to the plane. With no terminal to speak of, we passengers disembarked and milled around awkwardly while waiting for direction. Eventually we noticed a small tarp nearby shaded several folks, one of whom turned out to be the lovely Timu, sent from Uepi to fetch us. We grabbed our bags, carried them ~100 feet to the tiny dock where his motorboat was waiting, and off we went. Entering a building was never required.

Our way back, however, got more interesting.

We arrived at the airport about 1 hour in advance of our flight. That's when we learned that off to the side of the runway there actually are two small buildings bearing the Solomon Islands name. In one we checked out bags, which involved checking our name off a paper list and then placing the bags on the airport's one dolly. No id required. We were told to wait on the shaded porch of the other building, since it was noon and "the plane hasn't left Munda yet". Not to worry, we had a lovely chat with a local teenager who was curious about everything (What’s in your bags? Where are you from? Is that like “hotel California” the song? Is that near New York?).

While waiting, we also spoke with the bored airline agent while her adorable two-year old played nearby. We learned that this runway, like most airstrips in the Solomons, was first built in WW2. But until 2 years ago the runway was unpaved, but the New Zealand government had funded runway improvements and was about to build a much larger terminal building. This was part of a larger airport improvement project co-sponsored by New Zealand and Australia. The main goal was enlarging the runway at Munda so that Air New Zealand’s big planes had alternate landing site if there were issues at Honiara. Previously, flights from Australia and New Zealand would have to carry double the necessary fuel because if they reached Honiara and couldn’t land, the nearest workable runway was all the way back where they started! We also learned that our plane was doing back-and-forth runs to Munda, so we’d be landing there and transferring to a bigger plane (“

 Dash-8”, since the airline only has one of them).

Eventually the agent got a radio call that our plane had left Munda and was on its way to us. It's important to know when a plane is coming into Seghe since the main walkway through down bisects it and is open to pedestrians. and shortly after that we started hearing engine noise - and not the smaller almost constant boat engine noise from locals out fishing or running errands. One more passenger appeared, the plane landed and unloaded, and we three climbed into spacious 16-seater. This time our crew was all women and the no smoking sign was firmly attached! We were also confident this was a different plane that took us to Seghe because Andrew quickly saw that the instruments were the old “steam gauge” style, not “glass”.

After a beautiful 30 minute flight, Munda came into view and we landed beautifully, then turned around in the middle of the runway (why not? There was only one other plane, the promised Dash-8, around and it was calmly parked). We pulled up next to the Dash-8 and prepared to disembark, but the pilot said one word: “remain”. So we remained. And remained. And watched the Dash-8 load up, power up, and fly up and away. We remained. A group of Chinese tourists boarded our plane. “We are going to Gizo” they said. Huh. That’s the opposite direction of where we were supposed to go.

Upon landing at Gizo we picked up several new passengers, one sat next to Vera and asked “What are you headed to Munda for?” Cue alarm bells. Would we be stuck forever going between Munda and surrounding islands? Tune in next week to see if our heroes survive! Turns out, no one warned these new passengers about the airline’s (read: casual ride share) route changes. They, like us, were headed to Honiara and were expecting to fly to Munda and board “the Dash-8” (unlikely since it was long gone by now) to Honiara. Upon our last landing of the day (Honiara, finally!) we were reunited with the Dash-8 that had dashed off hours earlier. The next day we took our last Solomon Airlines flight (to Fiji) bringing our total to 3 of their 6 planes. We’ll have to go back to complete the set.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/MsjjztxpijTRihuX9

Solomon Airlines (Solomon Islands)