Air NZ mulls a return to London: How much does it matter to expats and Kiwis visiting the UK?
Thursday, 28 November 2024
Josh Martin is a London-based journalist who writes across business and travel topics.
OPINION: I’ll admit my interest was piqued last week when the rumour mill started churning that Air New Zealand was on maneuvers to reinstate routes to London.
Having sold off its lucrative rights to arrive and depart at Heathrow airport for NZ$42m in 2020, it couldn’t get these ‘slots’ back, but had done a deal and gained slots at its rival Gatwick, a 35-minute train ride to Big Ben.
The airline is, for now, remaining silent on its plans. But although I want the national carrier to be a strong and expanding link for tourists to New Zealand and Kiwis alike, I wonder if this is sustainable or even necessary long-term.
In essence, most Kiwis have already voted with their feet. Even for the six years when Air New Zealand flew out of Heathrow not once did I opt to pay the “patriotic premium” and fly back to Aotearoa with them.
Between NZ and the UK, you have no shortage of options and to my mind at least, Air New Zealand was too often seen as the equivalent of being stuck in the middle.
On one side of it you have the frequently cheaper Chinese carriers where fleeing twenty-something Kiwis can get generous baggage allowances and a near-full-service offering for less than $1000 one-way, if they can stomach a stopover in Guangzhou, Beijing or Shanghai.
On the other side you have the five-star service of Emirates and Qatar, with convenient connections, better baggage allowance and all the frills for only a 10-20% price premium than Air NZ (and often the same price). Their desert oasis hubs of Dubai and Doha have been frequented by many bloodshot-eyed Kiwi en route to Europe for a reason.
Throw in the American carriers (with enough options now to avoid LAX queues altogether) and arch-rival Qantas, and you can see why Air New Zealand said “haere rā” to London in 2020. It’s a competitive route that can be a lot of pain for prestige rather than gain.
Even now, with its link to London served by alliance partner Singapore Airlines, the Southeast Asian carrier is doing quite a bit of the heavy lifting, service-wise and brings capacity efficiencies which let Air New Zealand benefit from offering sometimes-competitive pricing on the route.
Thankfully, for our national carrier’s bottom line, it enjoys a near monopoly (or lazy duopoly) on the majority of its routes within NZ, across the Tasman and to the Pacific Islands, as well as loyal business class patronage that subsidise this expanded long-haul network for the rest of us.
The rumoured return to London could be just another iteration of perceived demand and excess capacity combining to revive a route that was previously too hard to make a buck on: the planes don’t make money parked in a hangar, and long-haul demand between the UK and NZ is well-established (compared to having to launch an altogether new route).
But the recent past of the national carrier shows the relative ruthlessness in which they can cut or pause routes just as swiftly as they launch them (please see: Buenos Aires, Ho Chi Minh City, Hobart, Chicago, numerous regional NZ cities) whether for fleet, operational or demand-led reasons.
Will a small patriotic smile cross my face if I see the black and white koru tail fin of Air New Zealand parked up at Gatwick? Probably, but it will take more than a bit of nostalgia, a “Kia ora, welcome on-board” to have me sat on a long-haul flight about to groan my way through their latest in-flight safety video as I depart London.