PNG Air CEO Muralee Siva said the new look reflected the company's new focus towards a more commercial role, which would also be reflected in the standard of service it would provide to customers.

"PNG Air is all about people and that will be reflected in everything we do. We are committed to creating more opportunities for people to travel, making it easier to book and pay for your travel and improving our service," he said.

"We started a strategic planning process two years ago, we identified that there were three key aspects of our business that we wanted to change in order to improve our performance - ownership, the aircraft and the brand name."

He said it was a new beginning and represented the results of hard work by employees built over many years.

PNG Air's majority owners are the Mineral Resource Development Company and NasFund, which the company said "sharpens the focus on servicing the domestic market."

Prime Minister Peter O'Neill was on hand for the launch and the unveiling of the airline's new ATR 72-600 aircraft last week, saying he would like to see PNG become a regional air transport hub.

He also said the government was seeking to open up air routes which will connect Port Moresby to other aviation hubs including Beijing, Seoul, Singapore, Tokyo and Manila.

"We are now engaging with our neighbouring countries so that we can have more air service agreements in place. We also have very well established arrangements with Australia and recently opened air services with Indonesia," he said.