You have to understand the ethos of the majority shareholder to understand the potential for the company.
This is a government which is generally anti-business and puts in place the laws of the land - they are also the majority shareholder.
Has anyone here ever asked themselves, why there are no competitors in New Zealand particularly on the domestic routes?
Jetstar is there, it is not serious competition, infact for any business person Jetstar is so unreliable it is not a plausible option. It tends to attract a certain type of customer, the type of customer that takes their shoes off beside you and hangs half into your seat no matter it be a 40 minute or a 4 hour flight.
Those domestic flights are absolutely jam packed, during the pandemic the airline almost completely stopped flying A320's on core routes (such as Christchurch to Auckland) and made many of us scrap for seats on tiny ATRs with no in cabin storage. They have done more than enough to really, really annoy their tiered clients and yet those tiered clients have no other option.
On the international flights just prior to COVID, I flew perhaps 1-2 times per month between Asia, Australia and New Zealand and the business cabin was always absolutely full - you would be lucky to have 2-3 seats free in business, ever. Want to try to slip into premium economy? Good luck with that on most routes, too. You might get the seat at the back beside the toilet if you try to book last minute in many cases from Brisbane or Sydney. The onboard business service is fantastic, staff are top notch and the business fold down seats are among the best. I do believe they need a separate lounge for business flyers or even a closed off quiet part of their lounges, there are too many noisy people with children screaming and ignorant tw*ts to think the lounge is a great place for their zoom meeting, minor changes make a big difference to regular travelers - it all feels like a bus ride to us, after many years of traveling.
Yet, there is no competition entering domestic or international the market.
Why is this? The majority shareholder has demonstrated that it has a distaste for foreign business ownership experiencing consistent success in the country and has taken steps in other industries to either penalise foreign investment, ban foreign investment outright or to prop up local investment to compete with foreign investment. It has openly made laws to discriminate against one person doing business from another.
For this reason, yes Air NZ will always be there, it will never go broke, but it may possibly never reach full scale competitiveness on an international stage - and that is what is demonstrated by the top players such as Qantas and Emirates.
For AIZ to succeed, the budget penny pinching budget mindset needs to go and quality and absolute professionalism towards the corporate client needs to return. I would suggest that begins by expanding the number of business class seats on aircraft, for which I have no doubt demand would absorb and increase profit margins.
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