Air NZ defends domestic routes

By Phil Boeyen, ShareChat Business News Editor

Monday 21st May 2001

Air New Zealand has announced further plans to strengthen its domestic service before Qantas officially comes to town.

Air NZ says it will use four of the former Qantas NZ whisper jets - BAE 146s - to add extra capacity on domestic routes and plans to employ around 100 extra flight and cabin crew as well as additional engineering staff familiar with the 146s.

CEO Gary Toomey says the collapse of Qantas NZ four weeks ago meant about 30% of domestic airline capacity disappeared overnight.

"By introducing the BAE 146s Air New Zealand will be able to more comfortably service the important tourism centres of Rotorua and Queenstown as well as the needs of business travellers in the main centres, including Dunedin and Christchurch."

Mr Toomey says the introduction of the jets will free up other aircraft in the company's domestic fleet which will be used to extend services in other cities.

Air New Zealand has vowed to fight the combined strength of Qantas and Impulse, who last week received the regulatory go-ahead for a tie up.

"The Qantas Impulse merger extends Qantas's competitive power in the Australasian market and will affect airline services on both sides of the Tasman. It increases Qantas's strength in the Australian domestic market and enables them to enter the New Zealand domestic market in their own right," says Mr Toomey.

"We must, and will, take steps to challenge Qantas's expanding strength in both Australia and New Zealand."

Meanwhile the airline's discount subsidiary, Freedom Air, which was set up several years ago in response to Kiwi Air, says it has carried more than 28,000 passengers since it began a domestic service three weeks ago.

Freedom says the level of interest shows that New Zealanders had been "crying out" for a value-based domestic service.

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