Bay of Plenty Times

Air New Zealand cuts schedule as it struggles for crew and planes

- Grant Bradley

Air New Zealand will cut its planned schedule and operate 1.5 per cent fewer seats than originally planned during the next six months.

The airline says it is taking proactive measures to protect customers’ travel plans as sickness continues to cause disruption.

And in a move that will anger former crew hoping to get their jobs back, the airline is exploring expensive “wet leasing” aircraft with crew for the busy summer period.

The airline said most customers who experience a flight change will be transferre­d to another flight on the same day for domestic travel, and for internatio­nal travel, on the same day or a day either side of their original booking.

Where customers cannot be accommodat­ed within these timeframes, they may change their booking online, opt into credit or request a refund.

Those customers with changes will start to see them from today and will be automatica­lly transferre­d to another flight. Those with further onward connection­s may also be disrupted and “we will work through these directly with impacted customers”.

Air New Zealand chief executive Greg Foran said making these changes now gives customers advance notice and will help the airline provide a service that’s more reliable during its rebuild.

“Like many airlines around the world, we’ve been ramping up our operation at a time when Covid and the flu continues to impact the aviation industry. Looking at the disruption­s our customers and staff have faced over the past five weeks, we’ve made some adjustment­s to reduce short-notice cancellati­ons in the months ahead.”

Sickness has been three times normal levels and the airline is still in the process of bringing back its biggest planes, Boeing 777-300s.

“While we did factor sickness into our ramp up plan, we’ve seen the highest rates of crew sickness in over a decade. We see these challenges continuing not just for crew, but for our whole operation, and so we’re making proactive changes to address them.”

Foran said reducing the number of flights means the airline will be able to have crew on standby to cover illness, which has not been possible lately.

The airline is “pulling out all the stops” to minimise disruption and

provide surety for our customers over the next six months.

“We have rehired or brought on more than 2000 pilots, airport staff, cabin crew, contact centre and engineers, and we’re going as fast as we can with recruitmen­t and training.”

The airline was also exploring options to lease a crewed widebody aircraft for the busy summer period.

“We know customers want the Air New Zealand experience, and that’s what we want to deliver too.

“But at the moment we’re stretched to capacity and making sure our customers are able to travel is our top priority.

“The lease of an additional crewed aircraft may help us achieve that.”

In the summer of 2017-18 the airline wet leased aircraft from specialist Hi Fly from Portugal to plug gaps caused by the grounding of Boeing 787 Dreamliner­s which needed engine repairs.

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