djsflynn

FYI and FWIW, here's the statement from Air New Zealand on the issue of those bags offloaded from the inaugural NZ1.

Why did this happen?
Operating ultra-long haul flights is challenging and Air New Zealand has been working towards the launch of this route for years, so it is incredibly disappointing that we weren’t able to bring all of our customers’ bags on Saturday’s inaugural flight.
At over 17.5 hours, New York to Auckland is our longest route and we made some adjustments to the number of seats sold to compensate for the extra fuel required to go such a long distance. We also do not carry cargo on the southbound leg.
On Saturday’s inaugural flight we had to amend our flight plan to go around a forecast cyclone. The temporary closure of our usual alternate airport, Ohakea Airbase also meant additional fuel was required in case of the need to divert from Auckland International. In order to get all of our customers where they needed to be, the team took the unusual step of offloading around 65 bags to meet the load limits.

Where is the luggage now?
The bags travelled back to Auckland via Los Angeles and were sent by courier to customers.

How many pax were affected?
Unfortunately, around 60 customers experienced a delay receiving their bags.
There were 202 customers on this Boeing 787 Dreamliner which can carry 275. We intentionally do not sell all the seats to compensate for the extra fuel load required for the ultra-long haul flight.

Are you satisfied the problem this week was handled properly?
We’re sorry that we weren’t able to bring all of our customers’ bags on this historic flight. Given the forecast cyclone and other conditions on the day, we prioritised getting all of our customers safely to where they needed to be. The team then worked hard to reunite customers with their bags as quickly as possible.

What are you doing to ensure the risk of similar happening is minimised in future?
This is not the way we wanted things to run for our customers and we’ll be reviewing what lessons we can take to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

We know our customers were incredibly excited to get on the very first New York to Auckland flight and we are sorry it wasn’t all plain sailing. We have the bags here in Auckland and are working to reunite them with our customers today, so they can start enjoying their time in Aotearoa.

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oranjemakker

So lets see
- They don't apologise to the customers directly, just a vague statement that "We’re sorry that we weren’t able to bring all of our customers’ bags on this historic flight." (also interesting to note the emphasis on the historic flight, i guess if this was just any flight its wouldn't be such a big deal to NZ to offload 30% of the bags
- they don't say how long it took to reunite the customers with their bags, I would have thought this would be a key point. Wonder if they have delivered all of them yet?
- they completely ignore the elephant in the room which is NOT TELLING the affected customers when they had 17 hours to work out how to tell them. They even made them wait in a line to find out why their luggage had not arrived. They havent apologised for this either
- They dont say they wont do it again
- They use the usual cop out it was for safety reasons almost to half justify what they did
-They mention a self congratulatory way that they dont sell all the seats on this flight, like that is somehow supposed to make the affected customers feel better. It is also completely unrelated to them offloading the baggage. Maybe they need to sell even less seats if they cannot carry the luggage. Its their decision to launch this flight and make a hoopla about it. if its not operationally efficient why did they launch it?

Arrogant and tone deaf IMO

OpenSky

There needs to be a system in place to decide which bags get off loaded. ( I assume NZ has one) Presumably you won't off load business premier passenger bags and your best customers.

kiwifrequentflyer

There is a system, they diectly said they pulled them from economy passengers exclusively.

nzkarit

Basically if your bag has a priority or crew bag tag it will be fine.

HGPilot

Seems like the solution is for Boeing to create an extra fuel tank given the extra space below so the margins aren't so tight that compromises may have to be made. Of course I'm writing this from the peanut gallery so what do I know.

sbiddle

Boeing have a HGW - 9 variant in the works amount with the HGW -10 that Air NZ were supposed to be launch customer for. With the Dreamliner issues both have been pushed back hence the reason Air NZ aren't getting - 10s at present.

OpenSky

The solution is to fly a A350 ULR , similar to Singapore airlines. But perhaps a 787 version. They are really stretching it.

Also Americans love carry ons, you can be certain the plane will be full of oversized carry ons, especially now that word is out that luggage may not make it. I think the solution is probably to reduce the passenger count even further, hopefully they find a sweet spot where the service can be operated reliably with everyones bags making it to AKL and no one made to feel like they are at risk for checking bags.

Either that or as you suggested, a spare fuel tank

nancypants

probably a stupid comment but if I was a J passenger terminating in NZ (as I have been), I would probably not mind my bag being left if it meant a transit Y pax could have theirs. Strikes me as there should be some priority for connecting passengers given the higher complexity of reuniting bags with those passengers?

nzkarit

Not sure what the loadings were like so don't know if there 60 pax represents the entire Y cabin or not.

International contecting bags generally would end up in a seperate can. So yeah they would most probably be handled differently for the cans of baggage terminating or Dom transit in AKL.

Thai-Kiwi

Greg Foran states weather and the unavailability of Ohakea for use as a destination alternate as the factors that required the off-loading of the bags of 60 pax. A destination alternate is required to ensure enough fuel to divert should the planned destination (AKL) become unavailable by the time of arrival (bad weather, runway closure etc).

Interesting (to me) that the statement doesn’t state which of CHC of WLG was nominated as the destination alternate.

60 affected Y pax, so presume a minimum of 60x23kg = 1380kg additional fuel. Probably more that this as some of those pax would has 2 bags as Koru/*G. Let’s assume 1500kg addition fuel was loaded in lieu if the bags.

B789 fuel burn is very roughly 5500kg/hr over a 12hr+ flight; higher burn at the start, lower near the end of the flight. Assume 4500kg/hr for this latter stage of flight.

So this provides an additional 20 mins flight time (1500/4500x60=20 mins). 20 mins flight time at (approx.) 600km/hr is 200km.

Not enough fuel for CHC to be used (Ohakea-CHC 435 km), but fine for WLG.

nzkarit

Fuel isn't linear relationship. Need fuel to carry fuel. And could have already had enough to get partially part to alternative.

Also from earlier statement they didn't offload status bags. Think they also said 65 bags for 60 pax.

Thai-Kiwi

Yes, it’s complex and quite difficult to generalise. Fuel burn is much higher initially, and as fuel burns off the aircraft can climb resulting in more efficient burn at higher altitudes. In this scenario trading bags for additional fuel wouldn’t have altered the initial climb/cruise performance calculations as the departure weight would be the same (all other things being unchanged) - the difference only being that additional fuel was available to meet the revised planning requirements due to altered routing (weather) and unavailability of Ohakea.

My key point was that trading 65 bags for additional fuel give you (only) about another 20mins. Of course, this is only ’tested’ IF diversion to the alternate is actually required.

Top of climb

Alternate was CHC.

The bad press could so easily have been avoided or
mitigated if the JFK station manager had transmitted the bag tags offloaded to AKL and there were staff waiting to tell these pax on arrival with a firm “your bag is now on X flight and will arrive at Y, in the meantime here’s a $Z voucher for the inconvenience”. Air NZ is really bad at handling disrupts like this - just no forward thinking or protocols in place at all.

nzkarit

Haven't used my self. But heard/read the US carriers for a example are good at having tracking. E.g.
* Bag drop
* Holding System
* Delivery assembly
* In Can
* Can on plane
* Can off plane
* Bag onto belt
Etc

Then if bag gets delayed can see location and it's current planned journey

All in the app.

The baggage systems record all that info, just a matter of creating an API to expose it to the app.