Air NZ expects long, slow recovery, internal documents reveal

Internal Air New Zealand documents predict it will be two years before the airline can hope to be back at 70% of its pre-Covid-19 long haul business. The airline is flying just 5% of its usual international schedule and is in the process of laying off 950 full-time cabin crew across its Boeing 787 and Boeing 777 fleets. It has already cut 300 pilot jobs, despite collecting more than $70m in wage subsidies and being granted a $900m government loan. A day in May 2019 would have seen the airline using 1500 of its 3000 cabin crew to operate its daily services. Now in May 2020, it is using 150 on wide-body planes and just 53 on narrow body or single-aisle planes used on domestic routes. In a redundancy briefing document to workers the company said the global pandemic has decimated the aviation industry, with Air New Zealand operating at just 5% of its normal international capacity, and it will not be scaling up for a long time. "We are now seeing the real likelihood we will be a much smaller airline of the foreseeable future, and that the recovery will be a lot longer and slower than previously anticipated," the document said. One year from now Air New Zealand expects to be 30% smaller, and it is unlikely to see an improvement in revenue in 2020, the company said. Redundancy briefing papers to staff show Air New Zealand is considering a union proposal to cut cabin crews' daily rate by 7%, the equivalent of reducing fortnightly pay by a day.<br/>