Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Why is Air New Zealand chasing their customers away?

Let's talk about Air New Zealand.

Look, if I was Air New Zealand, I would feel pretty beaten up after the weekend's opinion pieces. Bruce Cotterill  wrote a piece in one newspaper complaining that if Air New Zealand want to charge as much as they do, then they have to do the job better and be on time more often.

And then, Sam Stubbs wrote a piece in another newspaper telling them to stop overcharging domestic travellers.

Now, I cannot explain the timing. I can't explain why both those guys wrote harsh pieces about the same airline on the same weekend. But what's weirder about it is that I almost did exactly the same thing. 

I almost had a bit of a rant about Air New Zealand myself this weekend, because I had to pull out of an event on account of their ticket prices.

What it was is the husband and I were planning to go to a thing in Wellington. We started doing all the organizing, had the babysitter covered, organized to work out of Wellington for the day - and we went to book the flights and saw the flight prices.

It was pretty close to $1000 return per person, and I could not justify that. That is ridiculous.

Now, I don't have a problem, as I've said 1000 times to you, with Air New Zealand making as much money as it wants to.

I wanted to make money, I'm a shareholder - and we all are shareholders through the Government.

It does have to balance that with customer loyalty though, because Air New Zealand is now so overpriced that I cannot justify using it.

For the first time in my working life, I don't have Koru anymore, I cannot justify the expense. And while I have the same problem as Bruce Cotterill, I don't want to fly Jetstar out of loyalty to Air New Zealand.

But I reckon, give it a year. Because I reckon this time next year, I'm going to be flying Jetstar.

The flight from Auckland to Wellington on Air New Zealand for the event was $500 per person, just one way, right?

Auckland to Wellington, $500. The same flight on Jetstar at a better time was about $150.

That's Air New Zealand's problem right there, they're chasing their customers away.

One day, they're gonna wake up - and they don't realize it now - but they're gonna be surprised at how popular Jetstar is and they're gonna regret the fact that heaps of us tried out the orange bird and found it's not that bad.

And Air New Zealand will want us back and struggle to get us back.

And maybe the reason that Bruce and Sam - and maybe even me - criticized Air New Zealand on the same weekend is that we're only saying what everybody's already thinking.

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