1975: five Dakotas and a new flag

Papua New Guinea’s military flying began as a handover. The Papua New Guinea Defence Force grew out of the Australian Army’s land forces in the territory and came into being in January 1973; the air element followed with independence. ADF-Serials, which tracks every airframe, records the first four ex-RAAF C-47B Dakotas delivered to the PNGDF on 8 and 11 August and 10 October 1975, first serialled P65-001 to P65-004 and later P2-001 to P2-004 — weeks either side of independence on 16 September 1975. A fifth Dakota followed on 25 March 1981 and a sixth in August 1982, and a seventh airframe went to Igam Barracks in Lae as a ground training aid. The Air Transport Squadron, as it was first called, was based at Port Moresby, moved to Lae and came back to Jackson’s Field when Lae airport closed. The pattern of the next half-century was set at once: by ADF-Serials’ count Australia donated or funded 21 of the 26 aircraft the service operated after 1975.

1977–1991: Nomads, Aravas and the CN-235s nobody could afford to fly

The Dakotas were joined by the Australian-built GAF Nomad: three N22Bs in 1977–78 and three N22SB Searchmasters in 1982–84, with Australian Army aviators seconding two Nomads to train PNG student pilots. Two were lost. The Aviation Safety Network records P2-011 lost about 50 km south of Vanimo on 4 May 1981 with two killed, and P2-014 written off at Daru on 28 January 1983. In March 1985 three IAI Arava 201 STOL transports arrived from Israel, by ADF-Serials’ account routed through Lyon for political reasons; Flight International still counted all three in December 2015. In November 1991 two CASA CN-235M twin turboprops were delivered — the most capable aircraft the service had ever owned — and both were withdrawn shortly after arrival for lack of money. That gap between buying aircraft and funding them is the thread that runs through the whole history.

1989–1997: helicopters in the Bougainville war

The war on Bougainville, which began on 1 December 1988 when the Bougainville Revolutionary Army took up arms over mining and secession, made the air element a combat arm for the only time. In August 1989 Australia supplied four ex-RAAF UH-1H Iroquois under Project Wit Koki; a fifth, an ex-Argentine machine captured in the Falklands in 1982, was bought in July 1992. Wikipedia’s account, drawing on Australian sources, says the helicopters were provided without weapons on condition they would not be used in combat, and that the PNGDF fitted machine guns and used them as gunships; they also enforced the blockade of the island. Government forces were withdrawn from Bougainville in March 1990 and later returned. Amnesty International reported apparent extra-judicial executions by government forces in 1989–1990, and in June 1991, according to the Oxford Companion to Australian Military History, Colonel L. Nuia was dismissed for killing civilians and using Australian-donated helicopters to dump their bodies at sea. ADF-Serials records that the BRA claimed to have shot down Iroquois P2-404 in 1994.

1997: Sandline, and the gunships that never arrived

By 1996 the government of Sir Julius Chan wanted a decisive end to the war and turned to Sandline International. The contract, US$36 million by Wikipedia’s account and US$34 million by the ABC’s, was to bring 44 foreign contractors with Mil Mi-24 gunships and light aircraft; the first contractors arrived on 7 February 1997. The PNGDF Commander, Jerry Singirok, refused to support it, and on the night of 16 March 1997 soldiers under Major Walter Enuma arrested the contractors in Operation Rausim Kwik. Singirok was dismissed after his broadcast of 17 March; Chan resigned on 25 March amid protests. The two Mi-24s were diverted to RAAF Base Tindal in March 1997, where they sat for 19 years before being buried at a Darwin waste site in July 2016 because of asbestos, the ABC reported. The CASA 212 and Cessna 337 that Sandline had registered remained at Jackson’s Field. A truce followed later in 1997, the Lincoln Agreement in January 1998 and a peace agreement in April 1998.

2000–2019: grounded, revived, and the Moti flight

Peace did not bring money. Jane’s World Air Forces, cited by Wikipedia, recorded that the air element was grounded for five years until 2005, that a 2003 review recommended cutting it to 65 personnel, and that recruiting had raised the pilot pool to ten by January 2006, with training in Singapore and Indonesia. Indonesia donated a single NBo-105 helicopter, flown from 1999 to 2004 by ADF-Serials’ account. The Nomads went to Seagull Aviation in 1998 and the last Dakotas were sold in 1993–94. The revived service made headlines for the wrong reason on 10 October 2006, when a PNGDF aircraft secretly flew the Australian lawyer Julian Moti, wanted in Australia, to Munda in the Solomon Islands; Canberra cancelled ministerial visits, and a PNG Defence Force Board of Inquiry later recommended charges against Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare and advisers. From May 2012 Australia paid for two leased Bell 212 helicopters from Hevilift PNG under the Defence Cooperation Program, renewed into 2019.

2018–2026: P-750s, a Bell 412 and the Pukpuk Treaty

In February 2016 the PNGDF signed with New Zealand’s Pacific Aerospace for four P-750 XSTOL utility aircraft and two CT-4 trainers, US$18 million by ADF-Serials’ account. Only one P-750 arrived, in 2018, and its airworthiness was only restored in 2021. Australia then gifted two new 750XLs in 2023, with a joint ‘Flights of Excellence’ training and sustainment programme. In March 2022 Lieutenant Colonel Nancy Wii became the first woman to command the wing. In September 2025 engineers started the engines of a CN-235 that had been idle since 2017, ahead of an overhaul in Indonesia; the Defence Minister, Dr Billy Joseph, spoke of a sovereign air capability and of a future C295. A Bell 412 helicopter arrived in February 2026, and the Pukpuk Treaty of 6 October 2025 binds PNG’s forces ever closer to Australia’s. The honest verdict: half a century on, the wing still depends on Canberra for most of what flies.

Current fleet and orders

Airbus, Bell, CASA, Pacific Aerospace

Former fleet

Douglas, Government Aircraft Factories, IPTN, Israel Aerospace Industries, Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm (MBB)