Air New Zealand CEO Greg Foran revealed some of the 'painful' decisions the company took throughout their strategy review at a virtual shareholder meeting on Tuesday. Video / Supplied
Air New Zealand has tapped into $110 million of a near billion-dollar Government loan over the past month.
Chair Dame Therese Walsh says with travel restrictions still on the outlook for the airline remains uncertain.
The airline today also apologised again for poor customer service over refunds and credits.
"We know that Air New Zealand will continue to be a smaller business for some time to come. Although a month has now passed since we announced our annual results, a high degree of uncertainty still remains," she said at the company's annual meeting.
Air New Zealand booked a $454 million after-tax loss in the year to June 30, its first full-year loss since 2002. The airline went from flying 330,000 passengers a week last year to just 8000 during the April lockdown.
Given the uncertainty surrounding travel restrictions and the level of demand as these restrictions lift, Walsh said the airline was currently not able to provide specific 2021 earnings guidance.
"However, each of the scenarios we are currently modelling suggest we will make a loss in 2021."
She told the virtual meeting that its available liquidity as at September 25 was about $1 billion, comprising $215m of cash on hand and $790m remaining on the Crown standby loan facility.
The loan, negotiated in March, was for $900m with an interest rate of between 7 per cent and 9 per cent.
She said the airline would draw down it as necessary in order to reduce interest charges
Chief executive Greg Foran emphasised the cloudy future for the airline.
"One thing I would like to be really clear on however, is that there is still a huge degree of uncertainty, both in terms of how long this crisis will continue, and what the landscape will look like when we do emerge from Covid-19."
Air NZ chairwoman Dame Therese Walsh has been in the role for nearly a year. Photo / Dean Purcell.
He said the cost-cutting actions it had taken were based on a range of scenarios that may or may not play out in the way we envision, but they are necessary in order to ensure we can pivot our business and our planes quickly to those routes that make sense in "the new world order".
Foran said staff across the entire business have made significant personal sacrifices, with more than 3500 people sadly losing their roles, over 600 staff taking voluntary exit, and almost 400 taking significant reductions to their work hours.
He said from over 30,000 seats sold on our domestic network each day in 2019 to just a handful during Level 4, never before had Air New Zealand experienced this degree of change in such a short period of time.
''This tested every aspect of our customer service proposition and although this situation was entirely unforeseen, and even our most pessimistic black swan event planning could not have predicted this, at times we did not just stumble, we fell. For that I sincerely apologise.''
Foran, who started work as the Covid-19 pandemic, said that during the last eight months every stakeholder has been impacted significantly by Covid-19.
Air NZ chief executive Greg Foran started in the role as the pandemic struck. Photo / Michael Craig
"From our customers dealing with constantly changing travel plans and trying to access their flight credits, to our people who have worked through some of the most onerous and complex operating conditions in history; to shareholders with no dividend payment this year."
Suppliers had been asked to work to reduce the company's cost base and communities were less connected throughout New Zealand.
"This has been a total company fight; everyone is contributing, and everyone has been impacted."
Walsh said assuming there are no further material adverse developments, the company was expecting to complete the strategic capital structure review by early 2021 and be in a position to proceed with capital raising to be completed before June 2021.
