Air New Zealand Investor Presentation 25/11
 

Link to today's presentation.

Investor Presentation

Very interesting how they have analysed its Airpoints Members and messages.

"Increased focus on earn to fly vs. fly to earn".

I also noted they want to grow buisness in the Pacific Rim - wonder if it will be new routes, or just code share/alliance

Page 36 - Pacific Blue re-branded Virgin Australia :cool:

HVCs really are important with the premium membership tiers accounting for only 3.5% of the over 1 million members, but 20% of airpoints (so 96.5% only account for 80%).

This implies 35,000 silver, gold and gold elite members who on average fly 7 times more than standard members (on earning flights).

So the latest moves are to reduce how much they have to pay to HVC's by encouraging everyone to buy, which can only mean that they restrict the cheap upgrades and companion fares to status or they will increase all those current levels as if anyone can buy a $2300 business companion fare to London why wouldn't they?

I can't help but giggle at slide 3. And 4. I see the logic in what they're saying on slide 7, but as a customer I don't identify with it.

The change of "fly to earn" to "earn to fly" shows why from a frequent passenger perspective, Airpoints is continuing to circle the drain. This is probably a useful appeal to the twice-a-year travelers but doesn't seem to identify with regular traffic, which makes me wonder where their market intelligence comes from.

I think it will continue to fall flat with that top 3.5% of customers until they acknowledge that fly-to-earn and the benefits of doing so are extremely important for those regular passengers. QF seems to grasp this much better - they've turned earn-to-fly into a gimmick, but relatively continued to focus on the fly-to-earn bunch.

I found that really interesting, but I'd love to see it laid out as a percentage of fare revenue. E.g. Of all fare revenue from AP members, tier members bring in ??%.

Nothing on IAH-AKL?
 

overall, pretty conservative investor management.

I'm a bit surprised not to have a bullet point about the likelihood that CO, whose first 787 is in production, starts their long-ago announced IAH-AKL service (planned to be a launch route for the 787 - see here) in the first half of 2012. This will certainly be a code share with NZ, so I'd think AirNZ would talk about this in regards to market growth, or the benefit of strategic alliance partners.

Perhaps they don't want to insert a service year and the number 787 in the same sentence. That's understandable.

You've answered the question yourself.

Interesting to note

"Virgin Australia to improve service specifications"

Definitely a big difference when flying Pacific Blue vs an Air NZ plane

For sure ive now done 2 flights on DJ and have found them to be horrible.

DJ79 00l-AKL (Saturday)

CSM - Didn't speak English, couldn't under stand a word said.
Seats - Painful, No neck/back support.
IFE - Lets not go there! (Feels like flying in the 80s)
Passengers - Tour Party was standing up yelling and screaming most of the flight the crew did nothing. If this was NZ they would have been arrested.

You must have had the same CSM that I had the other day....

She was quite attractive, but could hardly speak English, and was rude just walked around smiling and not talking.

When leaving the plane, I said "goodbye" to her (as many other people did) and she just smiled

Agree 100% with everything else. Pacific Blue planes just feel old and "cheap" whereas the Air NZ A320's are fresh, modern and the crew are sensational!

I received a survey a few days after flying and I left all my feedback in there.

At the moment though Pacific Blue is really letting Air NZ down. There needs to be a consistent product, but I doubt that will every happen between Pacific Blue and Air NZ as the PB 737's don't have seat-back TV......

The CSM I had on Saturday was a guy, made me feel like we had a Asian based crew.

Several non-travel-savvy friends/family have inadvertently booked DJ at least o.w whilst on the NZ website (how they didn't realise it, I don't know) and they felt it was night and day between the two

There is no longer a choice on some routes now, both the afternoon ool-akl & bne-akl services are operated by Pacific Blue.