96% of Pacific Blue Domestic Flights on Time

96% of Pacific Blue Domestic Flights on Time in August

Thursday 10 September 2009: Pacific Blue has published a strong domestic on-time performance result for August 2009, with 96% of its domestic flights departing on time.

Pacific Blue became New Zealand’s first domestic airline to publicly report its on-time performance figures when it began publishing them on its website in July.

The online results go back to January 2009 and show that for seven of the eight months this year Pacific Blue has exceeded 90% domestic on-time performance. On-time is counted as flights that depart within 15 minutes of their scheduled departure time.

General Manager Commercial, Adrian Hamilton-Manns, said the latest result was a credit to all areas of the airline’s business. “On-time performance is a key focus for all members of our team and this is a very good result.”

Pacific Blue said that while Jetstar had followed its lead in publishing domestic on-time performance data online, it was disappointing that Air New Zealand had not yet stepped up.

“Air New Zealand has been telling New Zealand consumers that it has nothing to hide, but it’s very difficult to find its domestic on-time performance results on its website,” said Mr Hamilton-Manns.

Australian air travellers in particular are used to being able to find on-time performance data online because reporting is mandatory across the Tasman.

“We think Air New Zealand should be making more of an effort so that visitors from one of our biggest tourist markets can easily compare the performance of all New Zealand domestic airlines before choosing which one they fly with.”

Pacific Blue said it would like the New Zealand government to make domestic on-time performance reporting mandatory, with standardised measures for all airlines.

“When we measure our on-time performance we makes no exceptions for bad weather, air traffic control, delays from suppliers, unscheduled maintenance, consequences of previous delays or anything else for that matter,” Mr Hamilton-Manns said.

“We don’t know if the other airlines use the same strict criteria that we do, and mandatory reporting would be better for the travelling public.”

Pacific Blue’s domestic on-time performance is easily found from its website home page www.flypacificblue.com via the “Flight Info” menu button, or at the URL:
www.flypacificblue.com/Personal/Flightinfo/Ontimeperformance/OTPPB/index.htm

ENDS

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