Are New Zealand travellers getting a fair deal when flights are cancelled?

Monday, 27 October 2025

Grant Bradley is a business and aviation journalist.

OPINION: There’s a very old advert for an appliance chain that hammered the message: ‘’It’s the putting right that counts.’’

In the fiendishly complex aviation sector, that’s what airlines have to do.

More than four billion people fly around the world in a year, hundreds of thousands fly around New Zealand each week and nearly all get to their destination safely and happy. But there’s a lot that can go wrong - and it does. Gales last week disrupted flights around the country, and on any day the aviation system is at risk from the spectacular such as erupting volcanoes on international flight paths; to the more mundane when too many crew call in sick or catering trucks bang into planes.

Consumer advocates say passenger protection in this country is weak and the Government has ordered work to find out whether they need beefing up.

Associate Transport Minister James Meager has instructed the Ministry of Transport to study what protection is offered to passengers in other countries and these will be considered by the newly created Aviation Council, a powerful cross industry group with a broad remit to shape the sector's future.

He says there may be grounds to strengthen protection; whether that is airlines volunteering to do more for disrupted passengers or having a stricter regulatory regime imposed on them.

“Do we need to regulate or can we work with them to put voluntary codes of conduct? But I’m definitely keen to strengthen it in some way.’’

He’s conscious that new rules will put more pressure on airlines.

“There's always that balance. Whenever you put additional costs and reporting requirements onto airlines, that eventually all flows through to ticket prices.’’

In New Zealand, if a flight is delayed or cancelled, the right to a refund depends on whether it was the airline’s fault or not and whether you’re flying domestically or internationally.

If a flight is cancelled or delayed, and it was the airline’s fault, you are entitled to “reasonable compensation’’ for any additional loss you suffered. This is on top of any refund, rebooking or credit. Consumer Protection, a part of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, says how much you get depends on the level of inconvenience up to a maximum of 10 times the cost of your flight.

But if it’s not the airline’s fault - such as wild weather - there’s no automatic obligation to compensate passengers.

Consumer NZ maintains this means passengers bear all the risk while airlines can dictate terms.

Acting head of research and advocacy for Consumer, Jessica Walker, says her organisation has campaigned for the same sort of protections offered in the European Union where airlines are obliged to pay about $1100 for delays of more than four hours. It also wants to set levels of assistance such as drinks and food for weather delays of more than an hour.

She's disappointed at the lack of rapid progress on passenger protection but says Consumer NZ is happy that work is underway to find out what the rules are overseas.

The minister says anger at disruption has been intensified by some steep increases in airfares. Latest Stats NZ figures show prices in the domestic market - where Air New Zealand has more than 80% of traffic - surged 11% between August and September and all international fares were up 6.9%. This, on top of fares which have soared since the pandemic.

“I think if people say your ticket price goes up 50%, are they getting 50% more service or 50% better reliability?’’

Meager has a good grasp of issues in aviation and says he sympathises with airlines facing increased staff, maintenance and equipment cost increases. Work is also underway to find out how agencies can cut costs.

“Everyone likes to point the finger at each other, but we've all got to stand up and ask, are we operating as efficiently as we can to make sure we're not passing costs on unnecessarily. At the end of the day, there's one person that pays the price and that's the consumer.’’

The bumpy aviation restart following the pandemic continues. A study in Britain found punctuality is significantly worse than pre-Covid and although monthly on-time performance (OTP) data for airlines in this country started being published last year, it shows punctuality by dominant carrier by Air NZ is persistently hit by adverse weather on regional routes, and by both weather and engine issues on domestic jet routes. On the Tasman, the percentage of Air New Zealand flights leaving on time fell to 53% during a bad month and its punctuality is consistently below that of the Qantas group.