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Air New Zealand has extended the freeze on incoming international reserves until December 14 as the country’s quarantine facilities are close to capacity.
Last week, the Government directed Air New Zealand to suspend new international service bookings until November 2 to help ensure there was space available in managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) accommodation for incoming passengers for the required period. of 14 days.
On Friday, an Air New Zealand spokeswoman said Things had extended the hold on bookings until December 14 because space at MIQ was “extremely limited” before the New Zealand summer vacation period.
On November 3, it became mandatory for anyone planning to come to New Zealand to have a confirmed reservation at a facility using a new voucher system, called the Managed Isolation Assignment System (MIAS).
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The airline spokeswoman said returning passengers had to present their MIAS voucher at check-in and that if they did not have one, they would be turned away.
A spokeswoman for managed isolation and quarantine said 22,542 MIAS vouchers had been issued so far, and about 11 percent of them have been issued since they became mandatory.
Lawrence Smith / Stuff
For the second time during this pandemic, Air New Zealand is forced to halt incoming international bookings because the country’s managed quarantine and isolation facilities are at full capacity.
This is not the first time that the government has instructed airlines to end bookings.
In July, airlines froze new bookings for several weeks following a government request, so their MIQ facilities were not overwhelmed by returning New Zealanders seeking refuge from the worsening global pandemic.
Air New Zealand is 52% owned by the government and in August reported a loss of $ 454 million for the year through June 30, the first since 2002.
By the end of September, it had withdrawn $ 110 million from a $ 900 million Covid-19 support loan that the government agreed to lend in March.
The airline’s average monthly cash burn is expected to be $ 65 million to $ 85 and the total liquidity available as of September 25 was approximately $ 1 billion, comprising $ 215 million of available cash and $ 790 million remaining on Crown’s standby line of credit.
Since the New Zealand borders were closed in March, Air New Zealand has been operating primarily as a national airline.
Aviation consultancy Irene King said that about a third of Air New Zealand’s business was international and that the government’s border setup was destroying the business.
“I don’t think Air New Zealand will recover from this. I’m very, very pessimistic,” King said.
He feared that Air New Zealand would end up in the hands of a foreign owner, potentially becoming a domestic airline that was an appendage to another global airline business.
“A fundamentally good business is being destroyed by inappropriate government policies.”
The border restrictions were creating volatility not only for Air New Zealand, but also for its customers, he said. They were also damaging the brand’s reputation in New Zealand, he said.
“It is simply causing ongoing damage to the reputation of New Zealand and Air New Zealand. It’s crazy.
“You just can’t quarantine an economy.”
New Zealand’s Covid-19 strategy depended on the arrival of a vaccine, he said.
“You cannot run an open economy with a simple strategy that revolves around a vaccine.”
New Zealand has 32 managed isolation and quarantine facilities spread across Auckland, Hamilton, Rotorua, Wellington and Christchurch with a capacity of 6164 people.
In 14 days it is expected to be at 92% of its capacity, according to figures from the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment.
RICKY WILSON / Stuff
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says the quarantine capacity limitations are more than just the number of beds.
On Thursday, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said that, on a per capita basis, New Zealand’s quarantine capacity was greater than Australia’s, with up to 6,000 people in the facility at any one time.
There were 4,000 people working at the New Zealand MIQ facility, including up to 1,000 health personnel, as well as military and police surveillance security, he said.
“Few other countries are trying to stop Covid at the border in this way, and overall, it is working,” Ardern said.
About 65,000 people went through MIQ, about 10 percent of them were workers entering the country for economic reasons, he said.
The capacity constraints weren’t so much related to available facilities, but to access to skilled workers to ensure that operations ran smoothly, he said.
“It’s not just about bricks and mortar, it’s about people.”
The MIQ facilities required a stable and decent paid workforce, so they did not have to work multiple jobs, he said.
“There is so much capacity in some of those health and compliance areas that we have in New Zealand.”
