Foran takes first flight overseas as Air NZ boss
Air New Zealand chief executive Greg Foran flew internationally for the first time since he joined the airline more than a year ago.
Foran checked in for a Sydneybound flight from Auckland at 9am yesterday. He did so using a new digital health passport the airline is trialling to help make international travel safer and easier during the Covid-19 pandemic.
It was also the busiest day for the airline since New Zealand closed its borders due to Covid-19, with 42,000 customers travelling on nearly 520 Air New Zealand flights.
Foran said the Travel Pass app, which was developed late last year by the International Air Transport Association (Iata), an airline lobby group, could be a ‘‘viable solution’’ in allowing New Zealanders to travel to countries New Zealand had not formed a bubble with.
The app allows travellers to securely store and present information related to Covid-19 tests, as well as their vaccination status.
In February, Air New Zealand joined a small group of airlines, including Singapore Airlines, in agreeing to trial the app.
Air New Zealand began testing it on its Auckland-Sydney route a few days ago. Foran said he was one of about five Air New Zealand travellers using the app in the trial. The app was easy to use, and he was able to set it up within minutes, he said.
‘‘I found this incredibly simple,’’ Foran said.
A couple of days before his flight, Foran took a Covid-19 saliva test. It came back negative, and the details were automatically loaded to the app.
‘‘I think this is likely to be the way we will be doing international for some time to come,’’ he said.
By ‘‘we’’ he meant the whole aviation industry.
‘‘One of the reasons we partnered with Iata is, with them being the industry body, we think that’s the right way to go.’’
Having one universal app across the world made more sense than a number of different apps being used, he said. ‘‘We don’t want complexity here. We need simplicity.’’
If the app goes ahead the airline would work with government agencies to roll it out and accredit testing stations and vaccines.
Passengers create a digital health wallet linked to their e-passport; once they have been tested and/or vaccinated, labs will securely send data to the individual’s app where it is stored on their phone. The app then checks requirements for travel against the data and customers who meet those travel requirements will be given the green tick to travel.
Foran’s flight comes four days after a two-way trans-Tasman bubble opened on Monday, and 14 months after he joined the airline.
In late 2019 Foran moved back to New Zealand for the first time in 25 years, with his pregnant wife and young child, to take up the top job at Air New Zealand. He also has three older children living in Australia, one of whom is rugby league star Kieran Foran.
He will spend the weekend in Sydney visiting his older children, who he hasn’t seen for about two years, and will meet some grandchildren for the first time.
It has been a turbulent year and a bit for the former Walmart executive, who had no airline experience before joining Air New Zealand. On his first day on the job in early February last year, the airline announced it was pulling out of Shanghai due to the worsening coronavirus outbreak in China, and from there things went from bad to worse as Covid-19 hammered Air New Zealand and the entire aviation industry.
But green shoots are starting to emerge for the company, with its domestic network operating at near pre-Covid levels, and the long awaited opening of the trans-Tasman bubble providing an additional boost, with the prospect of more Pacific Island bubbles on the horizon.
Air New Zealand is operating up to 82 flights in the first week of quarantine-free trans-Tasman travel, about 50 per cent of pre-Covid levels on the Tasman.
The airline had pulled a few flights off the Tasman since the bubble opened, but overall got the capacity about right, he said.
’’We’re looking in really good shape over the next few months.’’
Foran, who is known for working alongside frontline staff to better understand the business, said he would be serving customers on his flight to Sydney. ‘‘This is my first opportunity to put the apron on on an international flight.’’
Air New Zealand general manager customer Leeanne Langridge said Auckland to Wellington was gearing up to be the busiest route for the airline, with about 5500 customers travelling between the two cities.
Auckland to Sydney would be the busiest trans-Tasman route, she said.
‘‘With the trans-Tasman bubble now open, a long weekend, and school holidays all coinciding, Air New Zealand is looking forward to a bumper day,’’ Langridge said.
‘‘I found this incredibly simple . . . I think this is likely to be the way we will be doing international for some time to come.’’ Greg Foran describing his experience using the Travel Pass digital health passport