Coast Air - Giving Greymouth a connection

 

Coast Air timetable 01 October 1986

Coast Air timetable 01 October 1986 including fares

In the heyday of domestic airline competition, Coast Air sought to take advantage of Greymouth's small airport to provide a direct connection to Christchurch (at a time when the other options were a rail service with very basic rolling stock, or SH73 which was threatened with closure over winter). As usual, the 3rd Level New Zealand blog has an excellent post on its history which I shall not repeat here.

This timetable from 1 October 1986 depicts the airline operating a double daily (weekday) service between Christchurch and Greymouth (Greymouth Airport is a small airport which has not had scheduled airline service since 2008, and has not had scheduled services from Air NZ and its predecessors), and also between Nelson and Christchurch.  At the time it was using a DeHavilland Twin Otter with 20 seats, which today would require one flight attendant to be on board as well.  

A Twin Otter with Short Take Off and Landing (STOL) capabilities is excellent for the short runway at Greymouth, but with fixed undercarriage and no pressurisation, it was slower than the Fokker F27 Friendships Air NZ was operating at the time.  This meant fares between Nelson and Christchurch would have to reflect a slower schedule (25 minutes more flight time scheduled) and it would have been less comfortable and more vulnerable to adverse weather conditions than the pressured F27. 

The rest of the story on 3rd Level New Zealand is worth a read, as the airline eventually closed in October 1988, in part due to Air NZ replacing its 48 seat F27s with 19 seat Metroliners and increasing the frequency of its Hokitika service.

Finally, note the airfares. Christchurch to Nelson at $70.91 and $84.55, why the odd figures? Because it is really $78 and $93 AFTER GST, which was only introduced that year (so the prices are pre-GST).  Today Air NZ operates up to eight return flights a day on this route. Fares on say 16 June 2023 range from $84 (seat) to $292 (flexirefund). Updating Coast Air's prices to today, it would be about $228 to $249 (noting GST is 50% higher at 15% today). So it may be fair to say prices are in real terms on the only route still operating are slightly lower than what Coast Air was offering in 1986.