Wellington may miss first Ansett flights

Press, 27 December 1986, Page 6

Wellington may miss first Ansett flights

PA Wellington Delays in starting a new terminal at Wellington may force Ansett New Zealand to bypass the capital and start its main trunk service with Christchurch - Auckland flights, said the airline chief executive, Mr Ross Keenan, last evening. The airline, set to compete against Air New Zealand on the main trunk routes, is ready to build at Christchurch and Auckland terminals but will not sign its contract with the Wellington City Council until next week at the earliest, Mr Keenan said. The company and the council have agreed to the building by Ansett New Zealand of a highclass terminal on the northern side of the international terminal. The new building will become part of the inter-, national flight facilities when Ansett New Zealand moves into the planned domestic terminal which it will help fund. If the contract was signed next week, the airline would have urgent discussions with the- contractor” the Fletcher Construction Company, which would design and build all the airline’s terminals, Mr Keenan said. A sign could be erected

on the Wellington site by January 5 declaring Ansett New Zealand’s intention to build.

“I would like to say we will start in Wellington in a month — but that’s not real,” Mr Keenan said. , “There are no facilities we can operate from now. You need something to conduct an airline from and when we start depends on when the Wellington terminal is finished. “That could be the middle of the year. It would be at least three months away. We could not start before the end of March. “It will be well into the year before we can get going out of Wellington.”

Ansett New Zealand’s lawyers were casting their eyes over the contract a final time this week-end to be sure it reflected the offer fully, Mr Keenan said.

“We have made a very generous offer,” he said. The Wellington deal will run into millions of dollars and although Mr Keenan will not say how much, he did say it was the sort of big money that Air New Zealand might have to outlay to be part of the new domestic terminal.

He said Ansett New Zealand had changed the

face of New Zealand aviation.

For the first time airport owners, such as Wellington’s City Council, were considering who benefited from baggage-handling belts and counters, and who should be paying for them.

The process of gaining Wellington consent for Ansett New Zealand to build its own terminals in direct opposition to Air New Zealand had taken far longer than he had predicted. Mr Keenan said the airline would start flying as soon as it had the terminals even if that meant bypassing the city that was lagging behind. “We could go first between Christchurch and Auckland,” he said. The airline desperately needs to get into the air as soon as possible. When the Ansett-Brierleys-New-mans consortium was floated earlier this year a. start-date of February was suggested. “The more time goes by the more advantage my competition has,” Mr Keenan said.

The only good thing about falling behind schedule was that it allowed the opposition time to show more of its hand, he said.