Air NZ - NAC Merger to end? (No)

In 1990 Evening Post transport reporter Shayne Currie wrote an article which claimed that the 1978 merger between state-owned domestic airline NAC (National Airways Corporation) and state-owned international airline Air New Zealand was about to be reversed on 1 January 1991. He was clearly mistaken. 

Some of the claims in the article were:

• Air NZ has excessive overcapacity on domestic routes, due to competition.
• Former NAC CEO Doug Patterson claimed that most benefits from the merger did not occur, and the "sole reason" behind the merger was to give Air NZ more sales offices to compete with overseas airlines.  The domestic and international airlines are "completely different types of businesses".
• Former Air NZ CEO Morrie Davis disputes that, saying it was cross utilisation of staff, aircraft and combined marketing and sales, and claims that had Air NZ's competitive culture not been introduced into NAC, NAC would have lost millions during the late 70s and early 80s due to an aviation industry recession and fuel price increases.
• In 1978 Air NZ had 5,200 staff and carried 910,000 passengers p.a. and NAC had 3,500 staff carrying 2.3m passengers p.a.  NAC made a $4m profit and Air NZ a $3.3m profit.
• The merger was meant to generate savings of $10m through rationalising staff, buildings and equipment, improve services, enable international aircraft to operate on busy domestic routes, infuse competitive attitudes in domestic services and increase domestic freight capacity.
• Doug Patterson claims that had NAC been separate it could have "convinced" government to stop Ansett starting Ansett New Zealand because it "would have been able to put to him in a more effective way the consequences of letting Ansett in".

Airlines split from unhappy marriage