Air New Zealand;s network has been hit by staff shortages, illness and weather. Photo/ Marty Melville
Air New Zealand;s network has been hit by staff shortages, illness and weather. Photo/ Marty Melville
Air New Zealand has come near the top of a list of airlines for flight cancellations for the last three months.
The airline ranks behind just Virgin Australia and KLM for the rate of flight cancellations , according to data from aviation analysts Cirium.
On the last weekend of theJuly school holidays alone, Air NZ expected 40 flights to be axed, affecting 126,000 passengers and the Cirium data quoted by Bloomberg shows 3.7 per cent of all flights were cancelled in the three months to July 26. While the survey methodology is not stated, it does reflect how badly Virgin Australia and Air NZ's domestic operations have been badly hit by a tough winter.
The New Zealand airline has described a ''perfect storm'' of factors, including staff shortages, sickness and bad weather hitting its schedule, which left stranded passengers angry and consumer advocates calling for a review of how airline customers are protected in this country.
Virgin Australia has been hit by the booming domestic travel in its home base while it is suffering staff shortages, as are airports and other suppliers. The same has happened to KLM where Amsterdam's airport, Schiphol, has had to restrict flights during a chaotic summer for air travel in the Northern Hemisphere.
Virgin Australia cancelled 5.9 per cent of flights and KLM 5.8 per cent of flights among a group of 19 airlines.
Air New Zealand ranks worse than Qantas, the target of public outcry in Australia for disruption to its passengers over winter.
Singapore Airlines - which has rebuilt services to this country as part of a big global network recovery - rated best with just 0.1 per cent of flights cancelled.
Virgin Australia KLM Air New Zealand Qantas Lufthansa British Airways American Airlines United Airlines Delta Iberia Latam Air France Ryanair Japan Airlines ANA Southwest Airlines Air Asia Cathay Pacific Singapore Airlines
• Source: Cirium through Bloomberg
Singapore Airlines was the best performer among the airlines surveyed. Photo / Supplied
During the school holidays Air New Zealand re-introduced its Covid ticket flexibility policy so passengers could get a credit for cancelled flights or those they chose not to take.
Chief executive Greg Foran said that as the airline was ramping up its schedule, it had come up against the "perfect storm" with severe winter weather and crew sickness up three times on what it normally is.
Of the total cancellations, 45 per cent were due to weather, 27 per cent to pilot or crew sickness and the rest either engineering or operational factors.
Its domestic network which has a high proportion of turboprop aircraft was more vulnerable to weather disruption and 95 per cent of these cancelled flights were domestic.
"This certainly isn't the experience we want our customers to be having with us and know that every cancellation has an impact," said Foran.
As the airline rebuilt it had brought back 2000 staff and was recruiting for more than 1000 more "which will help us to improve our operational resilience and reliability for customers".
It also points to earlier data from schedule analysts OAG which shows it performing much more reliably in the months to June.
Air New Zealand suffered during the July holidays as storms hit. Photo / Grant Bradley
Overseas there has been serious disruption as the rapid rebound in travel came before airlines and airports rebuilt following mass layoffs when the pandemic hit and flight numbers plummeted.
Lufthansa last week grounded flights for a day and said it was cancelling almost 3000 flights over the summer.
London's Heathrow airport has announced a two-month cap on daily passenger traffic to limit the turmoil - angering big customer Emirates.
Consumer New Zealand has called for a law change for passengers to be protected as they are in Europe and the US where they can get refunds if flights are cancelled due to weather. In this country the risk falls on the passenger and weather is deemed beyond the airline's control and passengers get credits, rather than their money back.
