NZ’S airline links ‘hanging by a thread’

Carriers may not return, warns industry group

Airlines will quit New Zealand permanently and this country will be left behind the international travel recovery unless there is more action to re-open borders, says an aviation industry group.

The Board of Airline Representatives (Barnz) says international airline links are “hanging by a thread” and will break without a more nuanced government approach to opening up the country.

Since Covid-19 hit, the number of international airlines servicing New Zealand has plunged from 30 to eight passenger carriers, and another four carrying freight only.

Barnz executive director Justin Tighe-umbers paints a grim picture of the sector, which he says will get only limited help from the rollout of Covid vaccines next year.

In January there were 30 international airlines connecting directly to 44 cities and about 600,000 passengers coming into the country every month. International passenger arrivals are now down by 98 per cent to match the managed isolation and quarantine capacity of 13,000 people a month.

Widebody aircraft were typically carrying 20 to 30 passengers and Tighe-umbers said it was only the “parachute” of the Governmentfunded freight subsidy scheme that was keeping international routes open.

He said a single 300-seat plane from a longhaul market added about $200 million a year in tourism revenue, carried $400m worth of cargo exports and was a “crucial conveyor belt of wealth” for New Zealand.

“As a country, we need to recognise this and maintain our existing air connections which are hanging by a thread,” he told a Tourism Export Council symposium.

He said the value of the airline sector to tourism and the rest of the economy was not well understood throughout the country and he challenged the Government to outline what planning was being done to open up the border. New Zealand was languishing well behind many other countries with the volume of available airline seats.

“The challenge that we’re facing in the airline sector is that New Zealand will be left behind if we make it too hard to operate here. Right now we’d be the toughest market for airlines to operate in the world,” said TigheUmbers.

“One of the things we have to get our head around is that many people think we are in control, we can open up safe zones when we’re ready, and I think we are starting to find out that this is simply not true. The rest of the world is not going to wait for us.”

There are fears in tourism that the international benefits of New Zealand’s relatively good record on its Covid response will be forgotten when vaccines are introduced and rival destinations open up more quickly.

Even without Covid, New Zealand was tough formanylonghaul carriers, said Tighe-umbers.

“We have some of the longest flights in the world coming into what is a limited catchment area. This means we have to work doubly hard to keep those air connections.”