Air NZ chops Aussie services

By Phil Boeyen, ShareChat Business News Editor

Thursday 25th October 2001

Air New Zealand (NZSE: AIRVA) is cutting a quarter of its flights to Australia's main cities and has made a number of other changes to its international schedules as it responds to the downturn in travel demand.

The airline says it has reviewed its existing schedules and made a business decision to trim back some services where reduced travel patterns and lower passenger numbers have been identified.

These include dropping 25% of flights to Melbourne, Brisbane and Sydney and 40% of the flights between Sydney and Los Angeles.

Flights to other destinations have not been cut back as severely, with only two of the 46 services between Auckland and Los Angeles dropped and only one of the 13 flights to Nagoya cancelled.

"We are not announcing any withdrawals from routes - simply operating a few less services on some of those routes," says recently appointed executive director, Roger France.

"The cancellations we are announcing are an interim measure, pending the completion of a new business plan by our executive and its adoption by the board. We are maintaining a close watch on forward demand to ensure that our scheduled services offer an appropriate amount of capacity."

The airline says in general the majority of cancellations being announced are for the month of November and amount to a 6% reduction in its scheduled international operating capacity during the month.

"Passengers affected by cancelled services will be automatically rebooked by Air New Zealand on the next best available flight - either later the same day or the next day."

Meanwhile the airline has had some good news to cheer itself up after much recent negative press, being voted the fourth best airline by readers of the UK's Daily Telegraph newspaper.

Air NZ took the position behind Emirates, Singapore Airlines and Virgin Atlantic at the annual Daily Telegraph Travel Awards published last Saturday. British Airways was fifth.

The company's UK/Europe regional manager, Roger Poulton, says the award recognises Air NZ's continual high levels of service in a very competitive market place.

"We are delighted that the British travelling public has recognised our solid reputation up in the UK.

"Our challenge is to maintain our high service standards in the changed environment we now operate in and encourage people to continue to fly with us to visit New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific."

Comments from our readers

No comments yet