Ansett NZ Whisperjets - Tranzair

It's 1989, and Ansett NZ was starting to replace its aging Boeing 737-100 jets (ex. Lufthansa, part of the original Boeing 737s introduced into service in 1967/1968) with BAe 146 four-engined jets, which were branded "Whisper Jets" because they were so much quieter than the 737s that both Ansett flew and Air NZ flew (although Air NZ's were the slightly quieter 737-200 Advanced series, it still had low-bypass turbofans that are deafening by today's standards, and aren't actually legal to fly in many airports throughout the world as a result).

Especially in Wellington, where airport noise had become a bigger issue due to the increase in frequency of Boeing 737 classic services, Ansett saw the BAe 146 as a differentiator to attract business, and would continue to fly them until the airline's demise in 2000.

Parallel to that, Ansett expanded beyond the trunk. TranzAir was a franchise created to link Ansett NZ to the operations of other airlines, in this case Rex Aviation flying Embraer Bandeirante between Wellington and Nelson (more on the 3rd level blog site).  Wellington-Blenheim was added later, along with Auckland-Whakatane and Auckland-Whangarei.  Although Auckland-Whangarei was cancelled in 1998 due to it being unprofitable, the regional Ansett NZ services continued until the airline shut down in 2001.

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1987: Air New Zealand and Ansett New Zealand go head to head

It's July 1987 and fully state-owned Air New Zealand is well aware that its long standing monopoly on the main trunk domestic routes is about to be challenged by Ansett New Zealand, which, at the time, was 50% owned by Ansett Australia.  Both airlines took out full-page ads in newspapers promoting the merits of their offerings. It's extraordinary to think that, quite possibly,  without Ansett New Zealand's entry into the domestic airline market, that it could have been many years (if at all) before domestic main trunk services had innovations such as airbridges and lounges.  As the ads are all A1 sized broadsheet, and my scanner is only A4, pardon me for cobbling these together.

Air New Zealand started with this ad focusing on its offering three - yes THREE - distinct classes of service:

- Pacific Class (Business Class) essentially consisting of Euro-business class with a blocked middle seat, Koru Club access, priority boarding and luggage, and better food and drink service.

- Economy Class (which now includes cold meals at meal times with light snacks at other times)

- City Saver (high density equipped aircraft with no on board catering, but all seats are fully flexible tickets for business travellers).

Air New Zealand introduced Pacific Class as a foil against Ansett New Zealand offering First Class on domestic services. As a quick conversion it blanked out the middle seats, inserted a small table in the middle and covered the window and aisle seats with sheepskin. It offered two-course meals at meal times, and high quality snacks in-between. At this point the licensing laws meant that on-board alcoholic drinks were not yet permitted. Priority check-in, Koru Club access (albeit they only existed in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch at the time) were also part of the service. It was sold as $22 more than full economy fares, but then most passengers didn't pay full economy fare.  This was seen as attracting higher income fliers who wanted comfort and privacy, but was also a placeholder to show it also had a premium product (and indeed it HAD offered such a service on its limited Boeing 767 and 747 services on certain days of the week, for some years).

Air New Zealand ad July 1987 - domestic business class - Pacific Class

At the other end of the market, Air New Zealand offered a no-frills, but fully-flexible service with a separate fleet of Boeing 737-200s set up as one-class, high-density, offering flat flexible fares and no-frills service. The hope was that business travellers would find this appealing, essentially being able to change tickets and fly whenever they wanted.  However, these were not the cheapest fares, and often standard economy (with some frills) could be cheaper on some routes and times, than City Saver. Ultimately, this failed in part because of the complexity and cost of having two different fleets of aircraft.

Before Ansett New Zealand, Air New Zealand had International First Class Lounges for international premium passengers, but not domestic. Koru Club was launched directly in response to Ansett NZ launching its Golden Wing lounges (reflecting the same in Australia).  It was entirely membership based at the time, although Pacific (Business) Class passengers could access it.  The focus was on refreshments, drinks, comfort, but also TVs, teletext news (!). Curiously it also offered access to Australian Airlines lounges (previously TAA, later to merge with Qantas) for domestic travel in Australia.  Particularly curious when later Air New Zealand would be 50% owned by Ansett.

Part of Air NZ's strategy was to uplift its core product - economy class (on the main trunk only). Seats got refreshed, but the main element was to offer cold meals at meal time, and snacks at other times.  By selling this as the "middle" class between Pacific Class and City Saver, the airline was seeking to cover the market

Ansett New Zealand, highlighting the importance of newspaper advertising in 1987, spent a fortune to produce a six page feature ad in major newspapers (newspapers today could only dream of this type of advertising, and this was broadsheet format).  The first page being "From today there's a new star in our skies" and the second and third being a stylised Boeing 737-100.

The core of Ansett NZ's push to attract passengers was an emphasis on quality of service, as it sought to target frequent flyers, particularly business travellers.  The key selling points for Ansett were:

• Hot meals at meal times in economy class
• Purpose built new terminals, especially relevant in Wellington (which until 2000 still had the converted 1920s aircraft factory as the domestic terminal), to operate more efficiently and with fewer crowds.
• Airbridges at airports (Given boarding on Air NZ until literally months before was done as steps to the aircraft, which in July meant a lot of exposure to winter weather).
• Quick check-in and baggage retrieval
• Airport lounges - Ansett's Golden Wing lounge concept used in Australia was brought to NZ, available on a membership basis and to passengers in...
• First class. With larger seats, more legroom, dedicated cabin crew, full three-course meals at meal times, storage for coats and larger carry-on baggage.

Also noted is the cutaway was... the availability of newspapers and magazines, activities for children, plenty of overhead locker space.  Ansett NZ was seeking (and arguably succeeded) in being the "premium" domestic airline.

The final page was the schedule. As this ad was in the Dominion, it was a schedule focused on Wellington.   It displayed a schedule of nine flights a weekday (six on Saturdays and Sunday) each way between Wellington and Auckland, and seven flights a weekday (six on Saturdays and Sunday) between Wellington and Christchurch.  By today's (2024) standards, this is far in excess of what Jetstar offers on either route. This was a significant effort to rival Air NZ.

This began a period of 14 years of competition between the two airlines, before the Air NZ ill-fated takeover of Ansett Australia saw the airline rebrand as Qantas New Zealand, before folding.  

In 1990: Can Air New Zealand compete?

In another of a regular series of articles on aviation, Martyn Gosling of the Dominion wrote the article below about Air NZ which was fundamentally based on whether or not it could succeed against competition, following its privatisation in 1989.

Some key points from the article are:

• Air NZ spends more promoting tourism to NZ than all other entities put together
• The airline has a strong reputation with the public, based mainly on its international service.
• Its reputation domestically was different, in part because it flew from the old terminal in Wellington, with poor service (noting the infamous pack of cheese that was difficult to unwrap and highly processed (and with little taste).
• A brief history of major challenges to the airline in recent years. Including Erebus in 1979, the Christmas 1984 cabin crew strike and the emergence of Newmans Air then Ansett NZ.
• Arrival of Ansett NZ as majority foreign owned was "unprecedented" for domestic airline access anywhere in the world, noting Australia wouldn't let Air NZ fly domestically in Australia. Air NZ fought back against Ansett NZ, with airbridges and on-board meals, and Ansett took over 100% of Ansett NZ as Brierleys pulled out. 
• Privatisation of Air NZ was a sale to Qantas, American Airlines and JAL, not British Airways as Air New Zealand wanted.  Apparently Australian and NZ government were both interested in a Qantas-Air NZ merger, so it came that Qantas owned 25% of Air NZ.
• Industrial relations remain fraught, with the latest issue being pilots refusing to crew the airline's Boeing 747-400

Fundamentally the article has little of substance to support any analysis as to whether Air NZ would thrive under competition or not.  It clearly was doing ok on domestic services, but there is little comment about international. 

The neighbouring article accurately summarises the airline's history from the days of flying boats.  It noted the airline chose to buy smaller airlines to replace Fokker Friendships. It notes some of the key competition challenges for the airline faces, notably:

• Domestic competition
• Noise restrictions emerging especially at Wellington Airport (affecting operation of Boeing 737-300 series - this was subsequently addressed by the airline buying hush kits)
• Acquiring third-level airlines (Air Nelson, Eagle Airways) to take over regional routes from its own Fokker Friendship fleet

It was noted that at the time of the article (April 1990), Air NZ's fleet comprised of:

• 5 Boeing 747-200
• 7 Boeing 767-200ER
• 11 Boeing 737-200 (including some Advanced series, although the article mistakenly listed them all as such)
• 10 Fokker Friendship F-27 500
• 5 Fokker Friendship F-27 100 (being phased out)
• 1 Boeing 747-400 (leased out to Cathay Pacific)

On order were:

• 2 Boeing 747-400
• 5 Boeing 767-300ER (although that type was not specified in the article)
• 6 Boeing 737-200 Advanced (called "quiet", which was a misnomer as the Boeing 737-300 order did not come for some years)

Wellington Airport: the saga of the domestic terminal

The saga of Wellington's domestic airport terminal was one from the 1960s through to the end of the 1990s, and one that more recent generations know not of, but it was the embarrassment of the 1970s and 1980s for Wellington in the way that water infrastructure is looking like in the mid 2020s.

When Wellington Airport was opened in 1959, its (then only) terminal was a temporary building, having been a De Havilland aircraft factory from the 1920s.  It has a range of characteristics that became infamous over the years. It would leak, it was draft ridden and in winter, cold.  All aircraft were boarded using steps as entrance onto the tarmac was at ground level.  In 1977 a new international terminal was built adjacent, as part of a plan to rebuild the whole terminal, but as it was a joint central/local government venture, there was no agreement on which entities would pay how much to pay for new capital investment. The international terminal served on average one or two flights a day at the most, and only to Australia.  It wasn't until Ansett New Zealand emerged on the scene in 1987, intending to build its own separate new terminal (adjacent to international), that the old terminal got significantly refurbished, at the cost of Air NZ, keen to not be seen to have a second-rate terminal.  It introduced airbridges, carpet, a lounge and improved the lighting and heating considerably.

However, the present day terminal emerged as a result of reforms starting in 1988 to corporatise and subsequently in 1998 part privatise the airport, so that it could operate as a business, borrow against landing charges and revenue raised from airlines, retail concessions and parking.  Political arguments and finger pointing between central and local government ended immediately, as it was clear the airport could raise the finance and pay for a new terminal itself.

In 1999 the new terminal opened, integrating the international and Ansett buildings into one, and is the terminal known today.

Below is a series of clippings highlighting some of the moments in recent history surrounding the debate over replacing the terminal.  I have a great deal more of this in my files that I have yet to dig out, so apologies for the haphazard nature of it...

The "Tin Shed Report" was a multipart series of articles in the Evening Post in 1985 questioning why there has been no progress on a new terminal.  The first was the Managing Director of Challenge Properties (which would later merge with Fletchers to become Fletcher Challenge) proposing that it be a property development that it could lead, but local politicians thought its proposals were "unrealistic". The second article was the then WCC Design Engineer discussing the Challenge plan, including plans for commuter airlines to use the international terminal check-in (which was underutilised with only one or two flights a day). The third article was then Miramar electorate MP, Labour's Peter Neilson describing how the Council had prioritised the international terminal and then a runway extension over the domestic terminal replacement.  WCC had called for the Government to fund its proposed runway extension as a priority, but the Government had rejected it (the local pressure at the time was due to Air NZ having dropped international flights from Wellington, as it had disposed of its McDonnell Douglas DC-8 aircraft and neither DC-10s nor Boeing 747-200s could operate 

The then Lange Government had proposed that funding for a new terminal would be split evenly between Central Government and WCC, and was dependent on WCC accepting a more corporate structure for Wellington Airport (within three years the Government corporatised the airport, along with corporatisation of multiple airports around the country).  At the time the concern was that WCC was delaying progress in agreeing on a new corporate structure.

2 October 1985 Wellington airport terminal

This truncated part of the editorial in 1985 had the Evening Post view of the time, which was that WCC wanted Wellington to be a "special case" that should get full government funding for a new terminal, which was not the government's position at the time.

14 October 1994 - success of Wellington Airport company

The corporatisation of Wellington Airport was reported by the Evening Post to be a success, with a modest profit.  Note at the time it was 66% owned by the Crown and 33% by Wellington City Council.  The editorial notes some would say "who would want to buy it" if it were privatised, given constraints on its location.  It noted the airport company has increased landing fees, increased income from retail concessions and parking, and cut spending. It notes new airport terminals will be built in four years.  The editorial indicates if more airlines are to come to Wellington, the airport has to improve.

Cook Strait News 25 July 1994

Cook Strait News was a local eastern suburbs newspaper in Wellington. This ad from the airport company reports on its twenty-year masterplan depicting visually how it intends to use its land.  Perhaps the most notable part that did not proceed, is bridging over the Cobham Drive end of the runway.

On the eve of the opening of the new terminal in June 1999, the Evening Post produced this two page cutaway of the terminal, with some history and statistics. By this time Wellington International Airport Limited was 66% privately owned (Wellington City Council retains a 33% shareholding). It would be fair to say, the transformation is unrecognisable compared to the "old tinshed"