service on September 21 -- one month early -- due to low demand, company spokesman Rob Kulat yesterday told The Royal Gazette .

"The Atlanta run was only meant to be seasonal but we're ending it a little earlier than planned because just after Labour Day loads dropped dramatically,'' he said.

The airline, which started Island service in May of 1995, runs two non-stop services during peak travel periods. In addition to Atlanta it flies direct to its home base of Newark.

Kiwi plans to end its Bermuda-Newark run for the winter on October 26. Daily flights are to resume in mid-April.

Passengers pre-booked to fly the direct Bermuda-Atlanta connection will be routed through Newark, he said.

Mr. Kulat said the company will take advantage of the slowdown to perform yearly maintenance to its fleet of aircraft.

The New Jersey-based carrier -- which also offers Bermudians cut-rate connections to New York, Chicago, Tampa, Orlando, West Palm Beach, and Las Vegas -- earlier this summer voluntarily grounded four aircraft in a conflict with the FAA over pilot training and recordkeeping issues. It was not the first time Kiwi has hit turbulence in its four years in business.

So news last week that the airline had sought liquidation seemed plausible.

But the troubled Kiwi was a different budget carrier -- Kiwi International Airlines, based in New Zealand. Now the US carrier is trying to cope with the confusion.

George Kasey, the US Kiwi's purchasing manager, got a shock when he checked with AlliedSignal on a pending delivery. An employee told him the good news was the auxiliary power unit on order was ready; the bad news was that "you guys are out of business.'' "I was incredulous,'' Mr. Kasey says. "Our aircraft were flying on schedule.'' When the AlliedSignal employee referred to the name of the Kiwi chief executive named in a news story, Mr. Kasey could breathe easier. It wasn't his boss.

But there were other problems. A foreign carrier, which Kiwi declined to identify, sent an internal memo telling its employees not to book anyone on Kiwi. "There was a stop-sell order for a couple of days before someone realised it was wrong,'' said Mr. Kulat.

"The funny thing is, we came first,'' he says. The US Kiwi started flying two years before its counterpart down under.

The two airlines have had similar problems. The New Zealand airline, which flew 7,000 passengers a week between Australia and New Zealand, closed because it couldn't compete against Air New Zealand and Quantas. The American Kiwi has had trouble battling big carriers such as Continental Airlines and Delta Air Lines on the East Coast.

The US Kiwi admits it co-opted a New Zealand icon in choosing its name.

Besides being a fashionable fruit, a kiwi is a bird that can't fly.