Barrier Air: Just who does this small airline think it is taking on Air New Zealand?

Saturday, 17 August 2024

Stuff Travel reporter Alan Granville profiles a small New Zealand airline with big ambitions, Barrier Air.

In the Far North, a small but significant new rivalry has emerged. It’s a true David vs Goliath battle, as minnows Barrier Air squares up against the mighty Air New Zealand.

Yes, the national carrier already faces competition on regional routes like Wellington-Nelson (Sounds Air and Originair) and Wellington-Blenheim (Sounds Air again), but now it has to deal with another domestic upstart, this time on the Auckland to Kerikeri route.

Barrier Air is already a familiar sight in the skies above the upper North Island and Bay of Plenty. With a headquarters in Auckland Airport and servicing Kaitāia, North Shore, Whitianga, Tauranga, and its spiritual home of Aotea/Great Barrier Island, the small outfit has expanded in the last couple of weeks to include Kerikeri.

Asked if he was worried about competing against Air NZ, CEO Grant Bacon admitted to Stuff Travel that he would have been in the past: “There’s been a few times where I’ve seen other operators go up against Air New Zealand and I thought ‘oh man, that’s not for me’ and we’ve actually stayed away from it intentionally.”

But he said the “intense” positive feedback the airline received when it floated the idea of the Kerikeri route gave him the confidence to give it a shot.

“Just the amount of encouragement we got from the market, where it wasn’t just a person every now and then saying, ‘you guys should keep moving throughout the Far North’, it was just dozens and dozens of people, whether its emails, direct to us or on social media.”

It’s the first real time “going head-to-head with a much larger airline”, but he hoped Barrier Air would be a “complementary” service to Air NZ.

“We're not looking to take massive volume from Air New Zealand. It's just about having another option for passengers and to be honest, knowing the total passenger numbers per year, if we got 10% we’d be quite happy with that.”

His research showed there are about 130,000 passengers a year travelling to and from Kerikeri: “I think our target would be to get 15,000 passengers initially in the first 18 months of operating.”

It’s still early days but the uptake has been “really good”: “We're currently at around about a thousand passengers have booked with us so far.”

The expansion has found support from Far North mayor Moko Tepania.

“I am hugely grateful for the service that Barrier Air provides in our district and its awesome to see their offering expand so that we now have both our Kaitāia and Bay of Islands' airports served by the carrier,” he told Stuff Travel.

“The additional service to Kerikeri will bring welcome competition and additional capacity that will benefit Far Northerners and manuhiri alike.”

Having begun life in 1983 as Great Barrier Airlines and mainly servicing Aotea/Great Barrier Island, the carrier made a big jump forward in 2015 with a fresh name and branding and a significant glow-up in aircraft.

The current fleet of five Cessna Grand Caravans will soon be joined by a sixth, another reason for expanding to a new route.

The model was chosen for its “efficiency” and its “minimal environmental impact”. “There’s just nothing that compares to it in the market right now,” said Bacon.

But they don’t come cheap.

Each plane costs about $6.5 million, with up to $600,000 in maintenance costs each year. Then every six or seven years a new engine is needed with a price tag of $500,000 to $700,000.

Bacon said he is keeping a close eye on the electric plane industry but “we don’t see right now that there’s anything in the market that’s close to being ready for us”.

Another issue is staffing, especially pilots. The airline is required by law to have pilots who have completed 1200 hours flying time, and also 500 cross country, 75 instrument and 50 night flights, and finding them is “quite challenging”. Holding onto them is another complication.

“Airlines have been quite brutal towards us in terms of their hunger for pilots”, as they get “hoovered up” by Air New Zealand and other big players.

But that’s just part and parcel of being one of the smaller airlines in the NZ market, but one that’s not resting on its laurels quite yet.

There’s another route possibly on the horizon, Auckland to Whangārei, pitting Barrier Air against Air New Zealand yet again.

So should the national carrier be worried?

“No,” Bacon said with a laugh. “The complementary aspect is what we're aiming for, to work with them and just give the consumer another choice really.”

More information at barrierair.kiwi.

Barrier Air facts

Founded: 1983 as Great Barrier Airlines, becoming Barrier Air in 2015.

Fleet: Six Cessna Grand Caravans. Five currently in service with another coming online in October.

Routes: Auckland to Kerikeri, Kaitāia, Whitianga, Aotea/Great Barrier Island.

Aotea/Great Barrier Island to Tauranga, North Shore.

Staff: Up to 50 seasonal.