Barefoot dash follows no-show bus
Susan Scott has stopped catching the Airport Flyer, after being forced to make a barefoot dash to catch a train and then her flight.
A user of the service for six years, she recently wrote to NZ Bus outlining her frustration.
‘‘With regards to future travel on the Airport Flyer, I won’t be risking it. I will take my car and pay. Another car on the road and less patronage of public transport.’’
Chief commercial officer Scott Thorne said NZ Bus was focusing on hiring more drivers and was committed to improving the performance of the Flyer service.
The company was talking to the regional council and Wellington Airport to reinvigorate the service and return to using the real-time information and Snapper ticketing systems, he said.
‘‘We are . . . hopeful of positive outcomes from these discussions.’’
Hutt South MP Chris Bishop said the service needed an urgent overhaul and he was running a campaign, Fix the Flyer, to get the service taken over by the Greater Wellington Regional Council.
Bishop said he heard stories like Scott’s all the time, including someone paying $100 for a taxi.
Regional council chairman Daran Ponter said he understood the frustration over the service but said it was a commercial contract between Wellington Airport and NZ Bus. The rules did not allow the council to subsidise a service if there was an existing commercial operation, he said.
The contract is due for renewal next year but Ponter said the regional council would not take it over. He was, however, keen to see the service improved.
Wellington Airport spokesperson Greg Thomas agreed the service could be better. ‘‘NZ Bus are aware of our expectation that they deliver a reliable service for travellers and we’ve had discussions on how to improve this.’’
That will not, however, Scott to use the Flyer again.
Her nightmare began when she left home at 6:40am for a 9am flight, having decided to ‘‘risk’’ catching the Flyer from Queensgate.
‘‘Of course now the Airport Flyer is no longer allowed to be displayed on the timetable displays – what a ridiculous and uncooperative decision that is – the bus never arrived.’’
She made a panicked phone call and was told the driver was not working that day and her best bet was a taxi.
‘‘I took my shoes off and ran all the way back to my car in Woburn, jumped in and raced up Knight’s Rd, parked, jumped out of the car still in bare feet and ran all the way through the Waterloo underground, up the other side and waited six minutes for a train.’’
She rang for a taxi to meet her at Wellington Station and made her flight but said she would never use the Flyer again. get
Kiwi medical students skipping overseas work experience for holidays has been a ‘‘wake-up call’’ for the profession.
Fifty-three trainee interns from three University of Otago campuses have been found to have submitted false work experience records.
Otago medical school dean Barry Taylor said rumours of the fake placements first emerged at the Christchurch campus. That prompted an ‘‘investigation to try to find if there was enough here to actually move to an investigation of academic misconduct’’.
The scam involved students falsifying documents for elective placements. Fifteen students were identified when the results were released on November 4.
But the investigation widened to include the Dunedin and Wellington campuses.
‘‘This is extremely disappointing to the medical school, and to me personally,’’ Taylor said of the one in five final-year students found to have not met acceptable attendance requirements.
All of those affected students had job offers from district health boards, he said, and it was ‘‘a bad way to start’’ a budding career. ‘‘Many of them are heartbroken.’’
Taylor would only confirm Eastern Europe as one of the destinations involved.
‘‘This is actually a wake-up call to the whole profession.’’
A ‘‘package of consequences’’ for the 53 students will include:
■ students not being able to graduate with the rest of their class in December;
■ paying back the grant funding for each week of holiday they took instead of attending their placements;
■ writing a self-reflective essay and a package of community service or research; and
■ automatic referral to the Fitness to Practise Committee.
The remaining 194 students who met attendance requirements will graduate in December.