Air New Zealand carried 10% fewer passengers in June

AIR New Zealand carried 10 per cent fewer passengers in the last financial year, while volumes remain less than half pre-Covid levels.

Passengers carried fell to 7.7 million in the year ended Jun 30 from 8.6 million a year earlier, the carrier said on Monday (Aug 8) in Wellington. The total slumped from 17.7 million in the year through June 2019.

New Zealand shut its border to foreign travellers in March 2020, depriving Air New Zealand of its long-haul and trans-Tasman business and forcing it to ground aircraft and fire workers. Since the nation began progressively reopening to overseas travellers in April, the airline has slowly started adding capacity on selected routes amid signs that tourist demand is growing ahead of the Southern Hemisphere summer.

Today's report showed passengers carried to Australia and other South Pacific destinations rose 90 per cent to 734,000 in the year through June, while long-haul volumes more than doubled to 175,000. Still, in 2019 the airline carried 6.2 million passengers on those routes.

Domestic volumes fell 17 per cent to 6.8 million, the airline said. That reflects fewer flights and the impact of a wave of Covid infections in early 2022 that curbed business and leisure travel. Domestic volume in 2019 was 11.5 million.

Air New Zealand reports earnings on Aug 25. In early June, it projected a full-year loss before other significant items and taxation of less than NZ$750 million (S$647 million). BLOOMBERG