Nauru Airlines boss Trevor Jensen tells conference ‘there’s not a lot to see’ on small island

You might think the head of a nation’s airline would be talking up all the wonderful things to do there but in the case of this Brisbane-based boss, you would be wrong.

THERE’S not a lot to see in Nauru.

How do we know? Just ask Trevor Jensen, the boss of Brisbane-based Nauru Airlines.

You might think the head of the nation’s carrier would be talking up all the wonderful things to do on the tiny island. But you’d be wrong.

At an aviation conference in Sydney last week, Jensen actually said “there’s not a lot to see’’ in Nauru and he downplayed whatever minimal tourism industry exists.

“There is no tourism market there. There is no infrastructure really on the island,’’ he said.

“The best hotel in Nauru, for example, would probably be the equivalent of the Gulargambone Travel Lodge and everything is two-star. There’s no taxis. There’s no tourism set up.’’

Trevor Jensen is boss of Brisbane-based Nauru Airlines.

Jensen wants to see a tourism board created and a plan to make things happen. He also hopes long-promised infrastructure actually gets delivered.

But even if that goes ahead, some of the locals might not be too thrilled. There are plenty who “don’t really want tourists’’, he said.

That hasn’t stopped Jensen from coming up with a novel plan to gin up interest from potential visitors.

He wants to start a marathon that would be the only one in the world where participants could literally run around the 21 sqkm country twice.

The biggest impediment? Feral dogs. Yes really. “We’ve got to solve the dog problem before we do the marathon,’’ he said.

AUDIT RESULTS

MEANWHILE, plenty of stakeholders are waiting to learn the results of CASA’s latest audit of the loss-making airline.

Before regulators kicked off their biennial check, former CEO Peter Sheehan and two other top executives wrote to the agency alleging there have been breaches of the Civil Aviation Act and a toxic workplace environment that tolerates bullying and abuse.

A Nauru Airlines jet lands on the runway.

Jensen has vehemently denied these allegations and, indeed, the Nauru government said everything was just fine just after initial audit checks wrapped up in June.

But that might be a bit premature since CASA’s findings are still unknown and City Beat spies say regulators have given the airline an extension for its deadline to respond to some of its concerns.

MISS MYANMAR

Against this backdrop, Jensen remains a director and co-owner of an entity called AA Nova Global Pty Ltd. Long-time associate Tony Middleton and a former Miss Myanmar, Aye Aye Naing, also serve as directors.

Middleton is the airline’s chief operating officer and Naing was flown to the Marshall Islands last month (by Nauru Airlines, of course) as a guest of the first Miss Marshall Islands Pageant, which is sponsored by … Nauru Airlines.

Pics posted to Facebook show her arriving with other Nauru Airlines executives and we understand that she jetted off to two other countries earlier this year, as well.

Responding to criticism about AA Nova, Jensen told staff in a recent internal memo that the company set up in 2017 “remains dormant’’ and there are no plans for it to get involved in the airline.

Yet, just weeks later, Jensen showed up at an aviation conference in Korea with his bio listing him as a “director of AA Nova’’.

SPIN DOCTOR

To help the airline navigate some of these thorny issues, Jensen recently tapped Brisbane PR operative Lyall Mercer, who formerly did the spinning for the government in Nauru.

Lyall Mercer.

Mercer raised quite a few eyebrows back in 2015 when he provided journalists with a police report which included the name of a Somali refugee who alleged she had been raped, as well as details of her vaginal examination.

Mercer copped ton of grief about privacy concerns but Nauru authorities defended his move and said a police probe concluded there had been no rape at the detention centre bankrolled by Aussie taxpayers.

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