20 April 2011

Air New Zealand today welcomed the decision by the New Zealand Commerce Commission to discontinue proceedings against individual employees of its Cargo business.

“This has been an incredibly stressful period in the lives of our people, and I have been saddened to see the needless impact it has had on these hard-working employees, not to mention the millions of dollars of taxpayers’ funds spent to get to this point,” said Air New Zealand General Counsel, John Blair.

“We have maintained from the start of the Commission’s investigation more than five years ago that neither the airline nor our employees had committed any breach of the Commerce Act and we remain firmly of that view. The Commission has yet to produce any evidence to the contrary despite the enormous resources it has deployed.”

Air New Zealand has recently successfully defended its position and practices at the European Commission following a five year investigation into the cargo activities of 22 airlines which resulted in substantial fines against 11 of them, but no finding of any wrongdoing against Air New Zealand. Air New Zealand was also last year cleared following a similar investigation by the Korean Fair Trade Commission. Air New Zealand is also not the subject of any investigation in Canada. Only the ACCC in Australia and the NZCC continue with any allegations and both are being strongly defended.

ENDS

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