Cassidy International Airport
Cassidy International Airport is an airport located north of Banana, a settlement on Kiritimati island in Kiribati. Until 2018, it was the only airport in the Kiribati part of the Line Islands with an IATA or ICAO code.
The airport is served by Fiji Airways from Nadi, Fiji and Honolulu, United States. Since neither Air Kiribati nor Coral Sun Airways owns aircraft capable of flying between Kiritimati and the Gilbert Islands, where all other operational airports in Kiribati are located, flights to Tarawa are operated by Air Kiribati using Nauru Airlines aircraft.
History
During World War II, the United States Army Air Forces Air Transport Command used the airport as a refuelling stop on its Pacific transport route from Hawaii to Canton Island for flights to Australia and New Zealand as well as a staging point for attacks on the Gilbert Islands, then partially occupied by Japan. The airport was expanded considerably during the war, and the World War II runway configuration can still be seen as abandoned runways and aircraft parking areas in aerial photography.By 1981, Air Tungaru, the former national airline of Kiribati, was operating nonstop Boeing 727-100 jet service to both Honolulu and Tarawa as well as nonstop flights to Papeete, Tahiti with this latter service being operated in conjunction with Union de Transports Aériens, a French airline. Aloha Airlines introduced weekly nonstop Boeing 737-200 jet service to Honolulu in 1986. In 1994, Air Nauru was flying Boeing 737-200 jets nonstop to Honolulu and Tarawa with the latter flight also operating same plane direct service to Nauru. During the early 2000s, Aloha Airlines was once again operating nonstop Boeing 737 service to Honolulu.