The French Polynesian president Edouard Fritch says his Tapura Huiraatira party will campaign in the April election with a proposal to build an international airport in each archipelago.
Edouard Fritch Photo: AFP or licensors
Currently, the only gateway is the airport in Tahiti although the former military airport on Hao in the Tuamotus is being primed for flying fresh fish to China once the atoll's huge planned fish farm is up and running.
Politicians on the Marquesas Islands, some 1,500 kilometres north of Tahiti, have been calling for an international airport to be built, saying it would be closer to Hawaii and Los Angeles and therefore a potential new hub.
The idea had already been floated at the beginning of the last decade by the pro-independence opposition.
Mr Fritch has told Radio 1 that such a project would have to be viable without subsidising airlines.
The Marquesas leaders have restated their wish of attaining better recognition and support by Paris, saying more power should be divested to them as control was concentrated in Tahiti.
