An Air NZ flight bound for Shanghai was turned back because of an “administrative issue” and the incident holds no political implications for ties with China, New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern said Monday. The flight, with about 270 passengers, left Auckland just before midnight on Saturday but turned around several hours into its journey and landed in New Zealand on Sunday, the national carrier, part-owned by the government, has said. “I think it is important to be really clear and not confuse administrative and regulatory issues as issues to do with the relationship,” Ardern said. “This was very much an administrative issue. There’s an expectation that inbound aircraft be registered, that the flight in question had not fulfilled the administrative requirements.” In Beijing on Monday, foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told said her understanding was that the plane had never registered in China. Ardern’s remarks followed questions by some politicians and analysts whether the incident pointed to broader issues in New Zealand’s ties to its key trading partner.<br/>
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One of the world’s biggest airlines is seeking to sue a passenger who did not take the last leg of their ticketed journey, threatening a widely used hack for cheaper flights. Lufthansa is pursuing payment from an unnamed traveller who, it believes, deliberately bought a ticket with no intention of flying the last leg. While an initial court case found in the passenger’s favour, Lufthansa has been given permission to appeal. At the centre of the issue is that passengers will pay a premium for non-stop flights. The principle that airlines charge less for more flights underpins pricing strategies by “network carriers” such as Lufthansa, Air France and British Airways. <br/>An increasing number of travellers seek to take advantage of such pricing policies, with online sites such as Skiplagged delving into databases to suggest how to cut costs on journeys by throwing away unwanted segments. There are numerous pitfalls, starting with the mistake that many people make of missing out the first flight. Typically they might find a Dublin-London-New York ticket more cheaply than London-New York alone and plan to use only the UK-US segment. But when they turn up at Heathrow they discover their whole itinerary has been cancelled because they were a “no-show” for the first flight. Story explains more.<br/>
ANA will focus on using its partnerships with other carriers and its own network growth to tap the potential of the Asia-Pacific market. Speaking on 8 February, the airline’s president and CE Yuji Hirako said equity investments by its parent company ANA Holdings in other carriers will enable the airline "to solidify our strategy" in the region. "We're going to establish routes that we will operate on our own, and through partnerships. We'll be able to merge or integrate each other's strategies, so that we can attack this market together more strongly," says Hirako. The comments were made on the sidelines of an event to mark ANA HD’s purchase of a 9.5% stake in Philippine Airlines’ parent company PAL Holdings. It is the second strategic stake the ANA group has made in a Southeast Asian carrier after acquiring an 8.8% stake in Vietnam Airlines in 2016. ANA has also attempted to invest in two carriers in Myanmar in recent years, but with no success. On its own part, ANA is planning to launch flights from Tokyo Narita to Perth on 1 September, and from Narita to Chennai during the winter schedule.<br/>