THE PRESS MONDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1987. Turnabout for workshops

Press, 23 November 1987, Page 12

THE PRESS MONDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1987. Turnabout for workshops

Confirmation that Air New Zealand’s Christchurch workshops have won a $5 million-a-year service contract from the Royal Australian Air Force is a feather in the cap for the workshops and its staff who, not long ago, were faced with the prospect that the base would be closed. More good news could be in the offing, too, because the airline has high hopes of securing a maintenance contract for the National Science Foundation Hercules aircraft that support the United States Antarctic programme. The additional work that this would mean for the workshops at Harewood should guarantee the long-term future of the base.

When the airline first mooted the possibility of closing the Christchurch base and shifting all of its engineering work to Auckland, it aroused a great hue and cry, not least among the engineering staff who saw their jobs going to the wall. The proposal lapsed, but the airline continued to make the point from time to time that the base was “at risk.” Air New Zealand’s international fleet is maintained at Auckland, and concentration of all maintenance work there has never seemed to be far from the thoughts of the corporate planners. Most recently, when the Government deregulated the industry last year, the airline warned that competition on the main domestic routes would further imperil the Christchurch workshops and the jobs of the 750 staff employed there. Pressure from Air

New Zealand and from the engineers’ union encouraged the Government to add a belated rider to its open-armed welcome of the Ansett-Newman consortium to the domestic scene with a demand that the new airline establish its own $4O million workshops next door to Air New Zealand’s within two years. If this was intended to be a daunting obstacle to the competition, it failed dismally, because the challenge was accepted Immediately. It did mean, however, that Air New Zealand certainly would not get any of the new airline’s maintenance work. The pressure was on to find outside contracts to keep the Air New Zealand workshops busy. The capture of the R.A.A.F. contract — about 20,000 man-hours on the upkeep of the Rolls-Royce Dart engines that power the R.A.A.F.’s fleet of Hawker Siddeley 748 s — will be doubly sweet for the workshops staff since their tender cut out the previous contractor, who was none other than Ansett Australia, the firm whose arrival on the New Zealand scene was being touted by Air New Zealand as the likely cause of the workshops’ demise. It just might be that the competition that has made domestic air travel better and cheaper for travellers on the main trunks also has been responsible for a more aggressive marketing of the plant and talents available at the Christchurch workshops. Whatever the reason, the prospect for the workshops is a lot rosier than it appeared only 15 months ago.