City man complains after foggy flight plan
As the sun shone down from a cloudless Invercargill sky, Peter van Lokven pondered what he’d just been told.
The self-employed accountant arrived at work about 8.30am on Thursday and cleared a message from Air New Zealand telling him his flight to Christchurch later that day had been cancelled because of bad weather.
He said he called Air New Zealand to query this, and was told the bad weather was in Christchurch, not Invercargill.
Not one to take things at face value, van Lokven then called Christchurch Airport to ask about the weather. No problems there, he was told.
He said he called Air New Zealand back and queried the bad weather story, and was told it was in fact a maintenance problem with a plane, and that Air New Zealand would refund his ticket.
Which was fine, except that earlier he said he had been told to claim insurance for the flight. van Lokven said he was concerned Air New Zealand could have been directing other passengers, as he originally had been, to claim on flight insurance when they should have been offered refunds as it was a mechanical issue which cancelled the flight.
He said he felt Air New Zealand had not been upfront with him and was concerned there was potential for the insurance carrier to be misled. van Lokven said he had laid a complaint about the issue with the Commerce Commission.
An Air New Zealand spokeswoman said its contact team was initially unable to reach van Lokven and left a message requesting he call back.
‘‘When he did return the call he unfortunately reached a member of a different team who mistakenly believed the flight had been cancelled due to weather.’’
She said flight NZ5504 from Invercargill to Christchurch on Thursday morning was cancelled due to an engineering issue.
‘‘Should an Air New Zealand service be delayed, cancelled or rescheduled by reasons within our control, such as an engineering issue, we will credit or refund the customer in accordance with our conditions of carriage,’’ she said.
The Air New Zealand contact centre contacted all customers on the flight early on Thursday morning to advise of the cancellation and to offer them a choice of rebooking their flight free of charge, refunding their fare or holding it in credit, the spokeswoman said.
Air New Zealand spoke to van Lokven on Thursday morning to clarify that the cancellation was because of an engineering issue and offered to refund his fare, she said.
When a customer takes insurance with Air New Zealand, the policy is held by Cover-More.
When a customer submits an insurance claim relating to a flight cancellation, Cover-More would generally contact the airline to verify the cause of the cancellation, the spokeswoman said.