Air NZ ‘shutting down’ regions
Anger builds at national airline after flights cut and engineers shifted.
Standing in the airport queue, Liz Boutet was furious.
She was one of dozen of passengers left scrabbling this weekend following Air NZ’s latenight cancellation of a flight to Whangarei, citing engineering problems.
She missed her grandson Khan’s seventh birthday: ‘‘Khan was so disappointed and so am I,’’ Boutet said. ‘‘He’s been so excited about his birthday since Christmas.’’
‘‘I take the flight from Whangarei to Wellington via Auckland about four or five times a year and there are always delays with Air New Zealand. It always seems to be because of engineering problems.’’
Boutet is not alone: for those who live outside the big cities, there has been mounting anger this week that the national airline no longer adequately serves half the population of New Zealand.
In the latest blow, the Sunday Star-Times has learned Air NZ is to relocate 12 engineering positions from Hamilton to other sites, as the city’s engineering base closes at the end of May.
It is the culmination of a restructuring process in which it has quietly pulled its engineers out of Blenheim, Napier and Invercargill over the past 12 months. (Seven of the eight workers got new jobs elsewhere in the company). And a year earlier, it laid off up to 60 maintenance workers as it centralised its regional operations in two hubs, Auckland and Nelson.
According to one pilot, the airline is ‘‘shutting down’’ regional New Zealand.
Marlborough Airport chief executive Dean Heiford said the district had a good relationship with Air NZ, but last year the company both closed its maintenance operation and cancelled the direct flight from Blenheim to Christchurch.
Now, staff from Nelson are called in for engineering issues, which could cause delays.
Regional Development Minister Shane Jones has been leading an angry public response to regional cuts. ‘‘Things are pretty desperate if garden variety Kiwis are ringing me late in the evening to complain about being stranded,’’ he said.
The airline’s shift of engineering jobs away from smaller centres reinforced his concerns about its direction: ‘‘I do feel that there is a certain elite culture that has taken root in the board of Air NZ and it’s filtered through to the executive and they’ve forgotten that their major owner is the Crown.’’
Air NZ regional airlines general manager Kel Duff dismissed the restructuring report as ‘‘not new’’.
The airline was consolidating its maintenance services in the areas where aircraft were most likely to be parked up overnight, and Hamilton was the last site in the process.
Even as Air NZ pulled engineers out of other regions, Duff pointed out that it still had a large fleet of ATR and Q300 aircraft based in Nelson, making the region a significant hub for engineering.
And he said Air NZ would continue to invest in its regional fleet, with 12 new ATR72-600 aircraft on order to replace or bolster numbers of existing planes.
Hamilton Mayor Andrew King welcomed Jones’ support of the regions, saying leadership from central government was the only way things would improve. ‘‘Unless Air NZ gets a directive for change from central government, then it will do whatever benefits its stakeholders,’’ he said.
The airline has stopped flying to Westport, Whakatane, Kaitaia and, just this month, the Kapiti Coast. And it has cut some routes to Palmerston North, Taupo, Hamilton and Whangarei.
Now, Taranaki locals are up in arms after discovering Air NZ has reduced the number of flights between New Plymouth and Wellington, meaning long diversions via Auckland or Christchurch.
But after an angry outburst from Kapiti mayor K Gurunathan, other regional leaders were yesterday more careful.
New Plymouth mayor Neil Holdom said the city’s growing airport had seen some investment from Air NZ, and Invercargill Mayor Tim Shadbolt said his city had a ‘‘close and positive’’ relationship with the airline.
Marlborough District Council Mayor John Leggett was also realistic about what could be offered. ‘‘We do have good service, the service to Auckland is a real bonus to us.’’
Yesterday morning, Liz Boutet was still stuck in Auckland as her grandson’s birthday party got under way in Whangarei.
‘‘I’m really brassed off by the way we’ve been treated,’’ she said. ‘‘The service is blimming disgusting. To me it’s a non-caring attitude.’’