Air services

There won’t be too many people agreeing with Damien Grant (News, March 25) that the Government should have let Air New Zealand fail in 2001.

Air New Zealand is a major employer, is profitable, generates significant overseas funds and competes well in the volatile airline industry. Perhaps the airline’s greatest value however, which is often overlooked, is its contribution to the promotion of New Zealand abroad and the opening up of overseas markets for our valuable tourism industry.

I don’t believe it is wise to insist that Air New Zealand should service unprofitable regional towns, particularly when there are secondtier airlines stepping up eagerly to

fill the void. To insist that the airline services unprofitable routes could compromise its efforts to initiate new international services.

I do believe, however, that Air New Zealand should be more cognisant of its role in regional New Zealand and where it exits a service, it should cooperate with the smaller players to aid continuity of connectivity.

Bill Mathews, Auckland

In 1982 Martin Watt and I purchased Motueka Air Services and renamed the company Air Nelson. We obtained a flight operating licence and flew between Nelson and Wellington. The company was formed because of the same monopoly engineered problems that existed at that time for folk flying from Nelson to Wellington. Air New Zealand now owns the company.

It seems that after almost 40 years we are back where we started in the provinces.

So I and my staff now always fly to Wellington by Sounds Air. The staff are courteous and efficient, but most importantly fly when the larger airlines have ‘‘engineering issues’’ especially from Wellington on a Sunday afternoon.

Robin Whalley, Nelson