Media release
29 July 2014
Air NZ apologises to and compensates NZ9 passengers for poor customer experience
Air New Zealand unreservedly apologises to the 227 passengers who have been caught in an engineering related rolling
delay to their flight between Honolulu and Auckland since Sunday night (NZ time).
Nearly half the customers affected by delays to NZ9 from Honolulu will arrive in Auckland this evening.
General Manager Customer Experience, Carrie Hurihanganui, says, “Due to the lengthy nature of this disruption, the
difficulty we’ve experienced in adequately communicating with customers and the fact we have repeatedly let them down,
we have made the decision that in addition to our unreserved apology we will also be compensating each customer $1,000
in either cash or Airpoints Dollars.
“Due to an unfortunate combination of events this group of passengers has travelled to Honolulu Airport on three
occasions expecting to fly, however, on each occasion the aircraft has been unable to depart because of a series of
evolving engineering issues.
“A part was required and we attempted to source a replacement within the US, however, despite assurances, the right part
was not supplied. Fortunately, as a backup, we also loaded the part onto NZ10 from our Auckland Technical Operations
base this morning and this will arrive in Honolulu this evening.”
Once the part is received it will be fitted as a priority and the original flight, renamed NZ6889, is now scheduled to
depart at 0730 tomorrow morning Honolulu time.”
Mrs Hurihanganui says, “We are incredibly sorry to have let our customers down and will conduct a full review to see how
we could have managed this disruption better.”
Ends