Coronavirus: 'We weren’t ready to handle this', Air NZ CEO says

Air NZ was unprepared for the sheer scale of customer calls it received as a result of coronavirus-related disruptions, CE Greg Foran says. Foran, sitting alongside his CFO Jeff McDowall, told the Transport and Infrastructure Select Committee that the airline went from fielding about 5000 calls a day before Covid-19 to as many as 75,000 a day during the crisis. “We weren’t ready to handle this. We’ve reacted as quickly as we could,” Foran said. Covid-19 wreaked havoc with Air NZ, which slashed its network capacity by up to 95% at one point, resulting in more than 15,000 flight cancellations. No airline had a refund or credit system in place to deal with such a huge number of cancellations, he said. “The reality is our systems and processes just could not cope.” Air NZ released a new online credit redemption tool on Monday, for the more than 300,000 customers who held credit for coronavirus-related disruptions. Foran said the tool was a “minimum viable product” and basic in the functions it could perform but the airline would develop it further. ”Trust me, we will not leave this stone unturned because you never know when Covid-20 might come and we would not want to find ourselves in the same situation we’ve found ourselves now.”<br/>