Air New Zealand reels from Auckland curbs, Australia bubble loss

Air New Zealand is operating less than one-third of its usual domestic capacity due to tough COVID restrictions in Auckland and doubts whether a travel bubble with Australia will reopen, the airline's chief executive said on Thursday. "We're running almost 100% outside of Auckland," Air New Zealand CEO Greg Foran said. "It's a reasonable network but Auckland is literally two-thirds of the domestic network so it's a pretty significant impact to our business, not having Auckland operating at this stage." The airline has said it is burning through around NZ$25 million ($17.30 million) to NZ$35 million of cash a month due to the lockdown in the country's largest city, which the government says will be scaled back in phases as vaccination rates rise. The Pacific nation was among just a handful of countries to bring COVID-19 cases down to zero last year and largely stayed virus-free until an outbreak of the highly infectious Delta variant in mid-August frustrated efforts to stamp out transmission. The closure of a quarantine-free travel bubble with Australia is costing the airline another NZ$20m to NZ$25m a month in cash burn. Foran said it was possible the New Zealand government would treat Australia like any other country in the future when it came to testing and quarantine rules, as is being done now.<br/>