Joint flights start of further links

Press, 23 October 1989, Page 4

Joint flights start of further links

NZPA Sydney The announcement of a joint Air New Zealand and Qantas service between Auckland and Adelaide is part of wider plans for 10 joint flights and an increase in the sharing of maintenance and training facilities. A Qantas spokesman confirmed plans to increase the joint flights and said announcements could be expected before October 29. The other flights are expected to run from Wellington and Christchurch to Australia. Air New Zealand will do more aircraft maintenance and pilot training for Qantas. The Australian airline’s training and maintenance facilities at Sydney are overstretched. The two airlines are also planning to jointly promote New Zealand and Australia overseas. Qantas now owns 19.9 per cent of Air New Zealand through its membership of the Brierley In-vestments-led consortium which bought the airline from the Government for $660 million earlier this year.

In Wellington air-indus-try analysts have sug-

gested Qantas and Air New Zealand could combine their buying power in negotiations on insurance and fuel and save inventory costs on spare parts, saving $5 million to $lO million for Air New Zealand. The move is in line with industry expectation that the two national carriers could seek substantial benefits through the partial rationalisation of timetables (freeing one 8747 with standing charges of $3O million); marketing, maintenance and heavy engineering. Analysts have said such close, co-operation would require sensitivity to legal and political matters, trust, and a willingness to bury past grievances. Apart from cost savings, it would better help the national carriers fend off the mega-carriers which might build market shares by slashing their margins on competing routes. Another possibility is that another shareholder in Air New Zealand, American Airlines, which took a 7.5 per cent stake before announcing this week that it would resume flights into New

Zealand, might make available its expertise in computer reservtioris and yield-management techniques.

Before taking its stake in Air New Zealand, Qantas signed a deal making Ansett its preferred carrier in New Zealand. It cannot drop the contract before 1990, but the loss of “feed” is estimated in the industry to cost the national airline less than $5 million.. Air New Zealand has announced it will fly a joint weekly service with Qantas between Adelaide and Auckland, starting on December 21. The airline’s Australian general manager, Mr Garry Court, said Air New Zealand would use one of its aircraft on the route, although the seating would be shared with Qantas. “Air New Zealand has been reviewing the New Zealand-Adelaide route for some years,” Mr Court said. Mounting a new service was a big commitment but the joint arrangement with Qantas made the route commercially viable, he said.