Frustrated traveller targets Air NZ with newspaper ad

Air New Zealand has ‘‘reached out’’ to a frustrated customer who resorted to placing a public notice to contact the airline.

The notice, published in The New Zealand Herald yesterday, said all other attempts to contact the national carrier had been futile. It asked the airline to contact the person flying with booking reference RWZLSH.

Following Stuff inquiries, an Air New Zealand spokeswoman said the airline was working to help the customer with their query.

‘‘We know that Covid-19 has impacted our customers greatly, and we are deeply sorry for the disruption this crisis has caused to so many of our customers travel plans,’’ she said.

‘‘We acknowledge that as we have worked through the thousands of flight cancellations it has often been difficult to get in touch with us.’’

The airline’s contact centre had extremely busy and teams were working extra shifts to help clear the backlog, she said.

‘‘We would like to thank all of our customers for their patience and understanding over the past two months.’’

Air New Zealand has come under fire in recent weeks, with complaints about cancelled flights and a lack of physical distancing.

Customers have also accused the airline of ‘‘double dipping’’ by forcing people to rebook with more expensive fares.

Like many airlines, Air New Zealand has been heavily affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

In March, chief executive Greg Foran said the airline could be at least 30 per cent smaller in a year’s time, which would result in about 3750 job losses.

Annual revenue is expected to fall by 90 per cent from $5.8 billion to less than $500 million as a result of Covid-19, he said.

Last week 300 pilots were laid off and a redundancy process is currently under way for up to 1500 cabin crew.

Other areas of the business have also been affected by job cuts.