Business has been up and down at Invercargill Airport but the organisation is bouncing back with traveller numbers increasing steadily. It’s pleasing for the airport’s general manager Nigel Finnerty and commercial and business development manager Julie Jack because they saw the monthly number of people visiting the facility going from 25,000 to 30,000 before lockdown to only 26 in April after the Covid-19 pandemic struck. The number of people through the airport in July was 21,000, compared to 27,000 in July 2019. Travellers are building in numbers and it should continue with Kiwis taking advantage of Air New Zealand’s heavily discounted fares, the upcoming school holidays and planes now back to transporting passengers to full capacity with physical distancing no longer limiting numbers. When Air NZ announced its discounted fares early last week a total of 1400 were snapped up in the first two days on the Invercargill to Auckland and return jet service, its head of tourism and regional affairs Reuben Levermore said. The jet service resumed after lockdown in July but was suspended for four days in August due to alert levels. “Although we had a little setback with recent alert levels and the fact we were unable to sell all the seats on board due to the physical distancing requirements, we see just how much enthusiasm there is for the service ... it’s really encouraging,” Levermore said. Nigel Finnerty and Julie Jack saw signs of passenger numbers growing two weeks after Air NZ had domestic planes back in the air on May 14 when the country went to alert level 2. Business has been up and down but we’ve seen really strong bounce back each time and we can see the demand [going] north and [coming] south is really high,” Finnerty said. Jack added: “The bounce back has way exceeded what we predicted.”
Also helping has been Stewart Island Flights’ move to changed its timetable to connect with the Auckland-Invercargill jet service. Within an hour of arriving in Invercargill passengers are on a plane to the Island. With the jet’s flight schedule changing in July from 6am departures out of Invercargill and arrivals at 9.30pm to lunchtime arrivals and departures, Finnerty and Jack have seen more tourists on the jet.
Quite a few skiers have been arriving on the jet before travelling by road to Queenstown. Finnerty thought that could be because of physical distancing restricting numbers on planes to Queenstown. One of his long term goals is to have two Invercargill to Auckland and return services operating on the same day.
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