Bothersome days for Air N.Z.

Press, 29 January 1986, Page 3

Bothersome days for Air N.Z.

By

LES BLOXHAM

travel editor

Sometimes you have to feel sorry for Air New Zealand. Spare a thought too, for its public relations team who toil to keep the airline’s image polished and looking shipshape. Lately they have been having truly bothersome days; industrial problems have been compounded by mechanical failures and such other nuisances as the finding of a stray .45 bullet (unspent) on the floor of the 8747 at Honolulu.

Such things never fail to give the PR team a tough time, fielding endless awkward questions from inquisitive reporters. For instance “Where did the bullet come from?” and “Was it dropped, by a plain-clothes security guard?” The response has been smooth assurances that Air New Zealand was satisfied nothing sinister had happened. The week started badly for the airline when its new 8767 required an engine change at Christchurch Airport (sans birds) and its passengers required a free night’s accommodation while they waited. Then the catering staff at Auckland and Christchurch turned off their ovens and went home, forcing the "Ritz of the Sky” to advise its passengers to have something to eat before turning up for their flights. If this dispute is resolved by Monday there

should be plenty of food, but no flights; the pilots will have grounded the whole fleet for their stopwork meetings. Now, if there is anything PR people hate most it is the threat of industrial action and groundings — passengers tend to get twitchy and start changing their bookings to other airlines, with or without food.

During such crises, any airline will adopt an optimistic stance: usually, “we are confident that a solution will be reached” or “no flights are being cancelled.” Whether they are at crunch time is a matter that can be worried about then. The airline’s cabin attendants — never slow to stir up a little industrial strife — were also quick off the mark this week with their condemnation of low fly-pasts at the Palmerston North Air Show.

Previously it has always been up to a captain to decide whether a flight was safe. The pilots undoubtedly will not take kindly to advice being offered from back-seat employees. To add to the airline’s PR woes, a 8747 heading for Vancouver had to return to the Honolulu terminal for a security search on Sunday after the bullet was found on the floor. The PR people polished off the episode with their “nothing sinister” assurances. On Monday, things were still going wrong for the airline. A 8747 taking off from Nandi developed an engine fault. Flames shot out of the back of one of the engines and the takeoff was aborted, without mishap. The PR team again had to offer words of comfort The engine was not on fire; passengers had not been endangered; the aircraft could have still taken oft on three engines. The president of the Federation of Labour, Mr Jim Knox, who was a passenger, threw in his tuppence worth: “I must say I was proud of the whole crew from the skipper down,” he said. What he could have added was that, if it had been next Monday, it wouldn’t have happg".ed: the whole fleet wn£' be grounded by the pilots.