Meher Baba's Life & Travels
- formally known as the Phoenix Islands, Pacific Ocean
Administered jointly by the USA & Great Britain until Kiribati's Independance
7- 8th August 1956
Meher Baba's plane flight from Honolulu, Hawaii to Sydney, Australia landed at this island-atoll to refuel only and then proceeded to Suva, Fiji Islands for the next fuel stop before the final leg to Sydney. Meher Baba did not get off the plane on this island.
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In Mid July 1956 Meher Baba and four of his men mandali ( close ones ) departed on a months circumnavigation of the globe. They departed Bombay ( Mumbai ) by plane landing briefly at Damascus and Beirut Airports then onto Zurich and London. They then flew to New York NY, Richmond V.,Wilmington NC, Myrtle Beach SC, Washington DC., Dallas/Ft. Worth TX, Los Angeles-Meher Mount-Ojai-San Francisco CA., then to Honolulu, (Hawaii Is ), Kroton Is, Suva,( Fiji ), Sydney, Melbourne & Darwin, Australia, then onto Singapore and back to Bombay in mid August.
The group left Honolulu at 8:45 P.M., continuing on Pan Am Flight 841. They touched down at Canton, China, for an hour at 3:00 A.M. the next morning, and then crossed the International Date Line, so that it was 8:15 A.M. on Thursday, 9 August 1956, when the plane landed at Suva in the Fiji Islands to refuel. Baba and his companions got off the plane and had coffee and a muffin. This was the first time Baba made contact with Fiji — the only other Pacific island (apart from Hawaii) that the Avatar would set foot on.
Lord Meher Online Edition Page 4088
** There is a mistake in the Lord Meher reference above ( China), they have been alerted to the error. Webmaster
Meher Baba flew in two different aircraft for the flight from San Francisco to Sydney.
In the first leg to Honolulu the plane was a Boeing 377 Strato-cruiser and the second leg to Sydney the plane was a Lockheed Super Constellation.
** The flight to Australia in 1958 by Meher Baba was in the same type of aircraft as he flew the same route in 1956. There is an ommision in "Lord Meher" that there is no mention of a brief stop on an island between Honolulu and Fiji for refuelling. It would have needed to stop somewhere to refuel. We can only assume it's the same island of Kanton in the then Phoenix Island group now called the Kiribati Republic. Webmaster
1958
Meher Baba and his men mandali flew from San Francisco on the 31st May and landed in Sydney on the 2nd June, via Honolulu and Fiji on a Qantas Lockheed Super Constellation - Flight 743 / 032.
