Our family had booked transfer with a seaplane from Turtle Airways from Paradise Cove Resort on Fiji to Nadi. On the flight was also a German couple.
The waves were relatively high on the day of departure and the pilot wanted to drift a bit backwards towards more sheltered waters before taking off. (He should have landed further back, as other planes usually did, and then this would not have been an issue).
Note that the 'landing strip' for seaplanes at Paradise Cove is partly in a channel/sound between two islands.
However, the current went in opposite direction to the waves and was also stronger resulting in us drifting 'the wrong way'. The pilot informed us that the wave height was too large to turn the plane around and taxi further back.
In the end he gave up and said we would take off from where we were and warned us that it would be bumpy.
For some reason his take-off path took us diagonally across the sound and gradually closer to the cliffs of the island. We got very close before the plane started to get airborne and we 'jumped' on the waves a few times.
To make matters worse as we got really close to the island one of the pontoons hit a wave and threw us laterally towards the cliffs.
We were just a few meters from crashing and killing all aboard.
The pilot apologized afterwards and admitted that it was too close...
When asked he estimated the distance to the cliff to be maybe 200 feet, but when all passengers voiced that it must have been much closer he did not argue the point...
People from the resort were watching from the beach and they later told us they were certain we were going to crash and they were in fact in the process of launching a boat to come to our rescue.
Watch the vid and judge for yourselves.
I would strongly advice against booking Turtle Airlines for tranfers between Nadi and vacation resorts on Fiji.
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