Paranoia sets in after a spate of cancelled flights

Justine Tyerman

WE set off to the airport bright and early in a high state of excitement, a team of good mates heading to the wedding of a Gizzy girl and an Aussie boy in Melbourne.

There is slight consternation when the departure time rolls around and there is no plane on the ground waiting to whisk us away to Auckland. Then comes the dreaded announcement — flight cancelled due to engineering issues. But all is not lost. We will miss our Air NZ flight to Melbourne but we have a day to spare before the wedding and the airline looks after us because we booked Gisborne to Melbourne . . . unlike two friends who booked the trip in two sectors and end up driving to Napier to catch a flight, because priority goes to those who booked in one hit.

We are rebooked on a late afternoon flight to Auckland and Air NZ do a deal with Qantas to get us on an 8pm flight to Melbourne. The Qantas 737 is chocker, has only two toilets, dreadful food and the tightest legroom I’ve ever experienced on a Transtasman flight. But at least we get to Melbourne in time and all such problems are forgotten over the next few days as we enjoy a beautiful wedding and a wonderful time with friends.

Five days later, we head back to the airport in high spirits believing we are on a nice big Air NZ plane for our trip home — but thanks to the code sharing deal, find ourselves on a cramped Virgin Australia 737 with no meal service or entertainment . . . not that we can figure out how to download anyway. Not to worry. I’ve had enough fine food to last me for days and I need a sleep.

We have a couple of hours to fill in Auckland before our flight to Gizzy. The departure board tells us the flight to Kerikeri is cancelled. There are groans from the passengers. I feel so sorry for them. We know how it feels.

Flights to Napier, New Plymouth and Tauranga take off on time and then the board tells us the Gisborne flight is delayed . . . and then it happens again. Flight cancelled.

Disbelief sets inWe look at each other in disbelief. Two cancelled flights within five days hitting the same group of people. It gets worse. No more flights to Gisborne that day, and all flights the next day are full. There are no rental vehicles available either.

Harassed ground staff set about rebooking disgruntled passengers on flights to other centres the next day with busses arranged to get people to Gisborne. The response seems disjointed. I tell them this is the second cancelled flight we have suffered within five days and we are not happy.

An American surgeon working at Gisborne Hospital is also unhappy. He has to get back in time for a full operating list the next day, so rents a taxi and driver at his own cost.

After two-and-a-half hours and much negotiating we are booked on an early flight to Napier the next day where one of our wedding crew has left his car after driving to Napier to catch a flight to Auckland when our outbound flight was cancelled.

The bulk of the passengers are bussed to the Novotel in town while a handful of us are sent to the Grande, which has the advantage of being close to the airport for our 6.25am flight to Napier the next day. Sadly the hotel does not live up to its name.

We get five hours sleep before catching a shuttle back to the airport. The flight is delayed, which causes us extreme anxiety, but we finally arrive in Napier at 7.25am. We are driving by 7.45am and home by 11am.

It has taken well over 24 hours to get from Melbourne to Gisborne, and to add injury to insult I arrive home to find two huge gashes in the side of my near-new indestructible Samsonite suitcase.

Other Gizzy-ites we talk to in the aftermath of our experience trot out a startling spate of recent flight cancellation stories — all non-weather-related — which start us wondering whether Gisborne is either incredibly unlucky or the target of a policy to cancel flights to less important, smaller provincial areas if there are aircraft or crewing problems. There are four cancellations in the preceding 10 days among our immediate circle of friends.

Throw in a sick pilotI think back to the departure board and the flights to small centres like Kerikeri and Gisborne cancelled while the flights to Tauranga and Napier go ahead. We were initially told the flight to Gisborne was cancelled due to the fact there was no plane available, then that there were engineering problems and finally that there was no one to replace a sick pilot.

Surely the most important thing about an air service is reliability. Some Gisborne travellers already take the precaution of booking flights to Auckland or Wellington the day before they need to be there to ensure they have sufficient time to drive if their flight is cancelled.

I also talk to a man who needs to be in Auckland for work without fail. He wants to live in Gisborne and commute on a weekly basis but found the air service too unreliable, so is reluctantly opting to live in Napier.

On the positive side, I must give Matt McDonald, customer relations team leader at Air NZ, full marks for promptly apologising for the cancelled flights, replacing my damaged suitcase, and crediting air points dollars to our accounts by way of compensation.

Air NZ communications consultant Emma Field also apologised for the inconvenience.

“However our operational data does not match the perception you outline that our Gisborne service is unreliable,” she said. “I can confirm that from October 1, 2015 to December 21, 2015, Air NZ cancelled eight of 576 services operating out of Gisborne: five of these were cancelled due to engineering issues, two as a flow-on effect of weather elsewhere on the network and one due to crew sickness. For the same period, nine of 563 inbound services to Gisborne were cancelled: five due to engineering issues, three due to weather and one was as a result of crew sickness.

“Air NZ strives to operate all services as scheduled but as with any other route, flights will be disrupted on occasion due to a number of factors, including both weather and engineering issues.”