In 1989, the Dominion's Martyn Gosling speculated that Air NZ was about to order replacement of around half of its Boeing 737-200 fleet, "forced" upon the airline due to noise complaints in Wellington and the "marketing advantage" of Ansett NZ flying the quieter and newer Bae 146 ("whisper jets"). The other "problem" was at the time there was peak demand for new aircraft and Air NZ needed to rush to buy otherwise it would "miss out". Of course demand for new airliners fluctuates over the years as airline markets rise and fall, so this proved not to be a key issue.
This article fundamentally proved to be wrong. Ansett NZ's Bae 146 aircraft did not save the airline from losing money, and Air NZ chose not to replace the Boeing 737-200s until the mid 1990s, when it ordered the last set of Boeing 737-300s off the production line at heavily discounted prices. The Boeing 737-200s would continue to fly with Air NZ until 2001, with hush kits.
The article speculated that Air NZ could:
- Order hush kits for the 737-200s to address the noise issue at Wellington (this was done)
- Order the Airbus A320 (but the article claimed it would be "too big" for the regional routes 737s were operating to at the time, such as Hamilton, Invercargill, Palmerston North and Napier, but the airline dropped jet flights to those airports in the 90s). Air NZ would latterly operate Airbus A320s for short-haul international services from 2003 and order more to replace the Boeing 737-300s in 2009.
- Order the Boeing 737-500 (and the larger Boeing 737-400) and also use them for short-haul international services, to free the 767s for longer haul routes.
So for another thirteen years, Air NZ would fly the Boeing 737-200 series, albeit with hush kits ordered in the 1990s to address noise complaints. From 1998 the Boeing 737-300s would start to replace them on both domestic and short-haul international routes, until Airbus A320s replaced them on the short-haul international services from 2003 and ultimately the last Boeing 737-300s were phased out in 2015 on domestic services (replaced by newer Airbus A320s).
Relevant is this 1987 article by Martyn Gosling celebrating twenty years of the Boeing 737 being in operation. It is a history of the Boeing 737 to date, and it remains remarkable that even in 2023, this same basic design is still being manufactured (albeit in what is essentially the fourth generation version in the 737 Max series). The history is in a NZ context, but it is worth remembering that in the first few years sales of the Boeing 737 were so slow, Boeing nearly scrapped the programme altogether. Boeing 737s remain in NZ use only for domestic air cargo by Parcelair, and from foreign carriers such as Qantas and Fiji Airways, flying internationally.
For New Zealand more generally, the Boeing 737 was revolutionary as it effectively was the deathknell of the future Silverstar overnight luxury express sleeper train which started in 1971, and the overnight ferry service from Wellington to Lyttelton. The Boeing 737 stripped business travel away from the Railways Department and the Union Steamship Company from the late 1960s through the 1970s, as such travellers preferred a short flight to spending a night on a train (or a ferry - in the form of the TEV Maori and the TEV Rangatira).
At the time of NAC introducing Boeing 737s, the overnight rail service between Wellington and Auckland was austere. Sleeper cars were only two-berth cabins, with toilets (no showers) at the end of the carriages, and no on-board catering (trains stopped multiple times for refreshments at station cafeterias). Meanwhile the Wellington-Lyttelton overnight ferry service was significantly hindered by the tragic sinking of the TEV Wahine, which left the service operating on alternate nights as only the much older TEV Maori was available. In 1971 the Silverstar started service, and in 1972 the TEV Rangatira, both of which significantly lifted the standards of the respective services, but it was too late. The Wellington-Lyttelton ferry service was terminated in 1976 after years of losses (and two years of subsidies to try to revive it), and the Silverstar was terminated in 1979 for an ill-fated refurbishment, to replace the rolling stock of the more basic Northerner train. That did not proceed, and ended luxury overnight passenger train service between Wellington and Auckland.
