About Face From Air NZ on Demand

Just days before its Freedom flights out of Palmerston North are killed off, Air New Zealand has announced it will increase its services to Australia from Wellington in response to “public demand”.

There will be an additional service to Brisbane, taking it to six return flights a week and from October 26 there will be an additional weekly service to Melbourne, taking the total number of return flights to eight a week. Both services would be operated using Airbus A320 aircraft.

Australian airline OzJet will launch services out of Palmerston North next month, filling the gap left by the State-owned carrier’s budget service, which the airline said had too few passengers.

However, yesterday Air New Zealand head of short haul airlines Bruce Parton said the additional flights out of Wellington were in response to strong growth in demand.

“Customers are telling us that they want greater choice in an out of the capital and we’re responding to that.”

Wellington Airport has consistently called for airlines to add more capacity to ease a severe shortage of seats out of the capital.

Trans-Tasman passenger numbers grew 1.4 per cent higher than a year earlier with no increase in capacity.

Aircraft were on average flying more than 80 per cent full.

The airport said in its latest market update that till more seats were offered Wellingtonians would be forced to travel to Australia via Auckland or Christchurch, or not travel at all.

Wellington Airport director Tim Brown said yesterday that the Melbourne services in particular were under served.

But just two weeks ago Air New Zealand chief executive Rob Fyfe struck back at the airport’s complaints, saying that service cuts early last year had returned the route to profitability.

“A combination of sustained demand, and capacity reductions, has simply struck a balance of supply and demand in the market that has far more chance of remaining economically sustainable,” Mr Fyfe said.

Wellington was the biggest loser when Air New Zealand cut its trans- Tasman services at the end of 2006 when competition regulators turned down a part merger with Qantas.

Air New Zealand cut seat tans- Tasman seat numbers by 15 per cent from Wellington as part of a 11 per cent reduction across its Tasman network.

Australia was the city’s biggest tourist market, with about 200,000 visitors a year from Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.

Budget airline Pacific Blue is also expected to announce more Australian services from Wellington soon.

Super low cost Tiger Airways, which began flying domestically in Australia in November also has New Zealand on its radar.

More than 2000 seats have now been sold for OzJet trans-Tasman flights since tickets became available last week, says OzJet commercial general manager Matt Payne. Bookings are available through the company’s website, by telephone and through travel agents.

Staff/Fairfax

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