Air NZ giving teachers break

A one-man campaign to give teachers a break on peak air fares has spiralled into a nationwide hotbed of praise for the man responsible.
And Air New Zealand is vowing to give teachers continued holiday deals.
Tauranga Intermediate teacher Ian Henderson has received nationwide publicity after successfully  urging Air New Zealand to give teachers cheap  deals during the October school holidays.
After noting flight packages always excluded school breaks, multimedia teacher Mr Henderson decided to go to the top and campaign on behalf of the country's teachers.
He emailed Air New Zealand chief executive officer Rob Fyfe and asked whether the airline could do some special deals for teachers as they always "missed out". Mr Fyfe agreed.
Special teacher flight deals for the Pacific and Australia expired at the end of yesterday but, due to enormous feedback, Air New Zealand general manager for online and leisure Dave Simmons said Air New Zealand would put more exclusive teacher deals out for future school holidays.
Mr Simmons said he planned to rope in the teachers at his children's school, Kohimarama Primary as well.
Grabaseat laid down the challenge to get numbers on Mr Henderson's Facebook group, "Cut Teachers some Slack Air New Zealand - Please??", up to 1000.
Mr Henderson's Facebook page yesterday had 1052 members.
Mr Simmons wrote on the  site  Grabaseat would now "come good on their promise and do something special for this group".
He told teachers to "Stay tuned!"
The story of Mr Henderson's fight for teachers, has been picked up by media nationwide.
He told the Bay of Plenty Times he was "overwhelmed" by how successful his campaign had been.
"It's gone absolutely crazy," he said.
Air New Zealand yesterday refused to provide sales figures for the teacher deals in October, deeming it "commercially sensitive". It instead said it had had "very positive response" to the initiative.