Greg foran

Labour shortage, global economy slow down poses challenges for airline.

This is why my most captivating story was the many returning and new Air New Zealand people rejoining the team and getting back into what we love doing most – connecting New Zealand to the world. In 2024, our new Dreamliners will offer a new Business Premier Luxe Suite, a new Business Premier seat and the world’s first Skynest. Christmas and New Year was our busiest period, so I worked through to help the operation. We had to farewell a third of Air New Zealanders. And this year, we have a host of very exciting activities planned. After three years of living in a limited environment, customers want to travel domestically and internationally. It’s been a huge effort across Air New Zealand to get us where we are today, and I thank our customers for their patience and our employees for their unrelenting passion to deliver. We know our customers like travelling point to point and arriving well-rested which is why we’ve worked hard to ensure as an airline, we’re providing the best sleep in the sky regardless of the cabin customers choose to fly in. We have some ambitious sustainability and digital goals we want to make real headway on. And we’re working hard to elevate Airpoints, our loyalty programme. Meanwhile, our cargo business skyrocketed as we worked hard to ensure essential food and products got to where they needed to be. We were busy getting the entire ecosystem back up and running and this included hiring and bringing back more than 2200 employees, reanimating five Boeing 777s and welcoming two new Airbus A321neos.