19 March 2018

Air Chathams Interested in Paraparaumu



Kāpiti Coast District Council plans to talk to airlines about expanding services beyond the Auckland to Kāpiti route that needs replacing when Air New Zealand scraps the service. The airline is dropping the daily Auckland service from Paraparaumu with the last flight in early April. Council chief executive Wayne Maxwell said the priority was finding an airline to fill that gap. "What's critical to us is a vitally sustainable and thriving airport, because it's really important both for our economy and resilience reasons. So we're actually looking a little bit bigger as well. "I want to talk to the airlines and go 'so what about some other destinations?'." Transmission Gully, a roading project making it faster to drive to the Kāpiti Coast, would increase demand at the airport, Mr Maxwell said, as people could drive in quickly from Porirua or Ōtaki. Passengers surveyed as they came off flights over the past few weeks had said they loved the service. Air Chathams has shown an interest in taking up the service. General manager Duane Emeny said Air New Zealand had been very proactive in providing interested airlines with data showing how viable it was to fly between Auckland and Kāpiti. "We've also had some discussion with the airport managers and the owners of the airport, because it is private land, and further to that we have been in discussion with the district council and the local mayor, and the (Ōtaki) MP, Nathan Guy." It was certainly the type of route Air Chathams would be interested in, and was similar to the Whanganui to Auckland passage the airline started flying last year, Mr Emery said. The population base and market was similar, and although there were airports an hour to 90 minutes drive away, some people still preferred to fly. Mr Emeny said the plane that would fly between the Kāpiti Coast and Auckland was likely to be a Saab 340, which had up to 36 seats, and had been well-received in Whanganui by those flying to Auckland. Meetings were been (does this mean were being OR had been) held on Tuesday, and Mr Emery hoped a decision would be made by the end of the week.

5 comments:

  1. The stuff article tonight says that specialist technicians looking at the obstacle clearance. Will be interesting to see if the proposed aircraft will meet the requirement performance. Historically the metro did, but alot has changed.

    Hopefully they don't run into same problems stopping larger aircraft operating into whakatane

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  2. Air Chathams would be the ideal operator. In Stuff this morning, Air NZ is happy to leave the ground handling equipment there and help in some 'marketing', if Air Chathams decides to operate the route. Air NZ, also indicated they would look at the possibility of loading AKL-PPQ-AKL services in CARINA (Air NZ reservation management distribution system) which is a suprise, that in the past, Air NZ have stated, they weren't interested in interlining other NZ based regional carriers. If Air NZ does decide to do this, there might be an Air NZ flight number using Air Chathams metal. I wonder if Air NZ will do the same with AKl-WAG-AKL services since Air Chathams is doing a good job?

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  3. "Air NZ, also indicated they would look at the possibility of loading AKL-PPQ-AKL services in CARINA"

    I doubt it.

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    1. That what Air NZ said to the media. I am somewhat suprise to Air NZ comment.

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  4. Air NZ already has a interline/codeshare agreement with Air Rarotonga another Saab operator. So they could set up a similar arangement with Air Chathams. It could work well with passengers flying PPQ to AKL and onto NZ flights on the one booking through check in etc. Air NZ could then promote the destinations that Air Chathams serve and vv. Flights with Air NZ to Whanganui and Kapiti Coast are operated by Air Chathams for example. Virgin Australia is doing this a lot with all their routes they have cut recently in Queensland. Virgin flights from Brisbane to Gladstone, Emerald, Mt Isa etc are operated by Alliance Airlines on behalf of VA. It allows those destinations to be offered to their customers without the running costs of flying there with their own metal.

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