Air NZ has often had an easy ride from our media. But with domestic airfares spiking, that's starting to change.
A Boeing Dreamliner 787, from the Air New Zealand fleet. Photo: Supplied/ Air NZ
When Newshub covered a competition to design a new uniform for Air NZ last year, it billed it as a "rare opportunity for high-flying designers”.
The report was gushing, hailing the airline's existing Trelise Cooper unforms for their intricately-designed buttons.
They are really good buttons. No complaints on fairness and accuracy grounds.
But the item still hit a bit of a bum note, partly because domestic airfares had gone up 53.7 percent in the year prior to it going to air.
Maybe that would’ve been worth mentioning inside, or at least alongside, the puff piece about new uniforms.
Newshub is hardly alone. Free PR for our national carrier is something of a time-honoured tradition for our news organisations.
Alongside excitable reports about new routes, in-flights snacks, new premium seating, new planes and new Wahs fan flights, they’ve dutifully covered the release of almost every new safety video for the last 15 years.
Nearly all have been met with peals of press praise, with the only exceptions being when Air NZ tried to make its mascot a sleazeball talking mustelid creature called Rico, and put out whatever this was.
But somehow even a highly-confronting rap safety video wasn’t enough to dent Air NZ's media boosterism.
So it was something of a relief to switch on the radio last week and hear a robust exchange between Morning Report host Corin Dann and Air NZ head of domestic Scott Carr.
At one point the interview stopped just shy of going off the rails, with Carr asking Dann "what on Earth" he was talking about in response to a question about Air NZ's alleged government bailouts.
The tough questioning followed a report from Consumer NZ which compared airfares on 11 domestic routes between 2019 and 2024 and found they’d gone up in price by 34 to 291 percent.
Statistics NZ figures also show domestic airfares rising faster – and sinking slower – than international ones. Prices on local routes went up 10.4 percent in quarter three of 2023, while trips overseas decreased in cost by 1.8 percent in the same period.
That gap raises serious questions, Consumer NZ’s chief executive Jon Duffy told Moring Report.
In his interview with Carr, Dann wondered whether the discrepancy might be down to Air NZ’s near-monopoly on many domestic routes.
"I think that's misleading to suggest there isn't any choice," Carr replied.
"There are a lot of very good small airlines out there - the Air Chathams, the Sound Airs, the Origin Airs, that can fly New Zealanders around the country as well."
When asked to clarify Air New Zealand's market share, Carr confirmed it was 86 percent, prompting Dann to emit a sound similar to a deflating balloon.
Now it might be a coincidence, but while Carr endured the withering media scrutiny, more positive stories for Air NZ popped up elsewhere.
Last weekend the Weekend Herald published a lengthy profile of the airline’s new head of sustainability Kiri Hannifin, whose last job was in PR for another duopoly operator, Woolworths.
The piece by the paper’s veteran aviation reporter Grant Bradley covered Hannifin's childhood, time in Guatemala, and her advocacy for Women’s Refuge before only briefly touching on fuel priced and consumer backlashes at the end - where Hannifin said the negative stories hurt.
Meanwhile, Stuff ran a five-star review of Air New Zealand’s premium economy service from New York to Auckland which concluded it was “nothing short of outstanding”.
That was interesting given, as the story concedes, the writer didn’t actually fly in premium economy the whole way. She was downgraded for the Sydney to Auckland leg before the flight took off because of an aircraft swap.
Neither did she particularly like her meal starter, and to cap things off, she didn’t even get an eye mask.
All this raised the eyebrows of Newstalk ZB’s breakfast host Mike Hosking.
"With all of that . . . come on, five stars?" he asked.
Hosking noted that flight reviewers usually fly as guests of the airline - rather than "paying for it like the rest of us" - and probably shouldn't be trusted.
The end of the review did acknowledge the writer, Ute Junker, flew as a guest of Air NZ.
A quick tour through some of her other hotel and airline reviews shows that’s pretty common. She has a little bit of scope for criticism, though the star count never dips below four.
Air NZ’s negativity-busting PR mirrors how things played out the last time it suffered a major media blip in 2021, when 1News’ political journalist Benedict Collins reported it had been mending vessels for the Saudi navy.
As debate raged over that decision, the airline’s chief executive Greg Foran made a series of soft-focus media appearances marking his first year in the job. In most, he spoke of the privilege of leading one of the nation's great brands.
Being a national carrier with a well-liked brand and a good international reputation buys you a lot of goodwill in our news media. And stories on the airline are a reliable source of precious clicks.
But with airfares from Wellington to Hamilton as high as $1281 return, the price of goodwill is going up as well.
Soon, just like a lot of New Zealanders hoping to fly around the country, Air NZ might find it doesn’t have the budget.
This story originally said travel reviewer Ute Junker was downgraded from premium economy before her flight took off. It has been updated to clarify she was downgraded for the Sydney to Auckland leg of the journey.
