Air New Zealand continues delivering more recovery flights from Japan and Samoa to bring stranded customers home following the recent disruptions to Auckland Airport. The recovery flights are part of a wide effort by the airline to add more seats to enable customers to come home quickly.
Providing an earlier travel option for a further 300 customers, an extra Apia, Samoa flight NZ6055 has been arranged for 2 February, and an additional 787-9 service from Narita, Japan NZ94 departs on 6 February to fly another 300 back to Aotearoa.
“We’ve pulled out all the stops to get our customers in the air,” explained Leanne Geraghty, Air New Zealand Chief Customer and Sales Officer. “We’ve redirected Cargo flights to pick up passengers, called in favours from our Alliance partners, used larger aircraft and adjusted our schedule wherever possible to make it happen. No stone has been left unturned.”
Customers in Japan and Samoa have been contacted by Air New Zealand – advised of the extra flights and backlog that the team is working through. Air New Zealand has nearly rebooked all 9,000 disrupted customers – with an estimated 300 still outstanding.
“Our focus has always been to prioritise rebooking our disrupted customers. Rebooking 8,700 customers has been a massive undertaking and one of biggest rebookings in our history – effectively two customers rebooked every minute since late Saturday evening.”
As schedules run as usual through the domestic terminal in Auckland Airport, things are still recovering in the international terminal due to heavy flooding over the weekend. Air New Zealand is aware of the inconvenience for some customers and has been working hard to get everything back to normal as soon as possible.
“We’d like to remind customers taking an international flight with us to please bear with us when checking in,” said Geraghty. “Repairs are going well, but many systems are still not yet operational. We have brought in volunteers from across the business to assist with check-in and baggage, and we appreciate everyone’s patience and understanding as we work through recovering from this unprecedented event.”
Air New Zealand intends to operate all services, and the schedule will largely be moving as normal from tomorrow.
