Emirates' Shauntel Whiteman behind the bar pre-Covid. The onboard lounge has reopened. Photo / Jason Oxenham.
Emirates' booking patterns for New Zealand flights are returning to normal, but it says this country's Covid rules risk stalling full recovery, especially compared to Australia.
The airline is flying daily into Auckland via Kuala Lumpur with a Boeing 777-300 and because it kept flying to this country almost continuously since the pandemic hit in March 2020, scaling up the operation here is easier than if starting from cold.
Now Emirates wants to restart non-stop flights from Dubai when demand is sufficient, and hopes to reinstate its Airbus A380 services.
Unlike New Zealand, the Australian Government no longer requires people travelling to that country to have a Covid-19 test before travel and Emirates has poured capacity back into the Australian market.
But New Zealand manager Chris Lethbridge said that the testing requirement here was an impediment to inbound tourism, and to outbound travel recovering.
"I think New Zealand needs to be mindful of the requirement for testing being an inhibitor for people to come back here," he said.
Visitors from visa-waiver countries - including Britain, much of Europe and North America - can enter New Zealand without self-isolating from next week but there is no fixed date for those from other big tourist markets which require visas, such as China and India.
Lethbridge said it was important to get them back as soon as possible. Indian tourists often travelled as big family groups, came here in shoulder seasons and travelled widely throughout the country.
"We've got to be a little bit careful that we don't just cut them off from here," he said.
"We got back to daily flights at the end of October last year and as the borders have reopened, our processes and our operations are pretty well streamlined already."
Emirates next year celebrates its 20th year of flying to New Zealand and has daily flights from Christchurch to Dubai via Sydney in the booking system from November, using A380s. Lethbridge said the double-decker planes remain popular with passengers.
"As the demand increases, we haven't had to go through that restart because we've never left, which has probably made life a bit easier for us."
He said the rapid removal of Covid restrictions in other countries, and the gradual easing of rules in New Zealand, had resulted in booking patterns returning to something close to where they were before the pandemic.
"Now we're seeing countries just saying 'if you're fully vaccinated and you have boosters and you've got your international vaccine certificate, you can come and go', so that normalisation of travel has made things a lot easier operationally and it's also given people confidence to book."
The booking window was now stretching out for months, instead of the urgent, spur of the moment trips seen during the pandemic.
He said New Zealand was following closely behind Australian trends.
"Our core origin destination city pairs have come back — in the UK and Europe. And the other thing we're seeing is an appetite for premium travel a lot earlier than we anticipated," said Lethbridge.
"And that's a combination of things - people haven't travelled for a couple of years and then there is that social distancing as well."
The flight experience for travellers — including its A380 bar and first class shower suites — had been restored. The decision to maintain a near-constant presence in the New Zealand market was paying off.
''It's allowed us to capture a lot of the business that we probably wouldn't have captured in the past. Outside of New Zealand, the world's quite normal, we're back to 130 destinations."
Emirates had reintroduced its partnership with Qantas.
"So as the Auckland flight fills up, the spill falls onto the Qantas-Emirates operation - we can retain the passenger and we give them an alternative. What's made it a bit easier for us is the Australian borders have opened earlier than ours."
Lethbridge said that when borders were restricted for passengers, air cargo was what kept the airline going on New Zealand routes.
"There's still a massive shortage of belly freight coming in and going out of New Zealand."
The airline has benefited from the New Zealand government's freight subsidy scheme.
With visitors from visa-waiver countries from next week, Lethbridge said there would initially be a rush of people visiting friends and relatives and an influx of skilled workers.
"The one thing about tourists coming from the northern hemisphere is we can't change the seasonality. I think we've probably got another six months before we start seeing that true leisure and premium market start to filter back into New Zealand as they've enjoyed the European summer."
When a European winter kicks in, people will be looking for a southern hemisphere summer holiday.
New Zealand was attractive with its high vaccination rate, low Covid death rate, and a good health system, he said.
"In theory, New Zealand should appear on the top of that bucket list of places people would like to visit."
Lethbridge has recently returned from a trip to Dubai and said airline travel was close to being normal, aside from testing to get back into this country mask use on planes and needing an international vaccination certificate.
"Airline travel is not as complex as people thought it was going to be — it's becoming less and less complex." He was through Dubai Airport to kerbside waiting for a taxi in about 25 minutes.
"In Dubai, Covid wasn't really a conversation. People had moved on from it which was really refreshing." Expo 2020 had been "mind blowing" and he was disappointed that more New Zealanders had not been able to experience the event.
Lethbridge said Emirates had invested in product, including premium economy cabins, during the past two years.
Emirates, the world's largest long-haul airline, expects to return to 100 per cent of operations and network capacity in 2023 as demand for travel and tourism recovers.
At a briefing this week, Emirates' chief operating officer Adnan Kazim said the carrier is operating at 70 per cent of its pre-pandemic capacity and that will increase to 80 per cent before the end of the northern summer.
"For us, next year will be the year of full recovery — 100 per cent. That's what we aim for," UAE news outlet The National reported.
During the pandemic the airline has suffered the first losses in more than 30 years and in the 2020-21 year that loss was $8.4 billion.
Last year airline president Tim Clark forecast that it would return to profit next year.
Lethbridge said increased digitisation was starting to take some ot the friction out of travel. However, travel agents sill had a strong role.
"You've probably seen purchasing habits changed during Covid. Some people who may not have been comfortable booking using a digital platform may have changed."
However, it would be a combination of approaches.
"The more complex the journey, your travel agent will be invaluable because there is still going to be the time when you need to have that peace of mind if you're on the other side of the world and something does happen."
Lethbridge said fuel prices were a big issue as airlines try to rebuild balance sheets after the worst of the pandemic's impact on them. The price of jet fuel is about 120 per cent higher than at this time last year, at about $193 a barrel.
"We've tried to maintain our pricing. We've tried to pass as little on as we can to the customer. From a competitive point of view, I think you'll find all the airlines still in the same price bracket [as pre-Covid]. You can get to Europe and back for just over $2000."
Pre-pandemic, 29 international airlines operated through Auckland Airport, connecting to 45 destinations. As at the end of March this year, 14 airlines fly internationally to 25 destinations but there have been announcements of a few more returning.
"I think what you'll see is some special pricing as carriers come back," said Lethbridge.
"But it takes airlines a while to sort of ramp up services. The other thing is the pricing. We've got to make sure a route is viable otherwise the aircraft goes elsewhere."
Speaking this month, soon after Team New Zealand said it would take the next America's Cup regatta to Barcelona, Lethbridge said Emirates was still keen on being one of the syndicate's main sponsors.
It began its relationship with the team soon after beginning services to this country in 2003.
"We've got to remember we've had a fantastic run with them. We hope it continues but sponsorship is a head office decision," he said.
"Irrespective of where it's hosted, it's a global team on a global stage with that kind of exposure. It's becoming very much like Formula 1 where it's teams rather than countries."
Other Team NZ sponsors had shown ongoing loyalty.
"Sponsorship's always been a big part of our operation and we've seen right through Covid - we've seen maintaining relationships with football, golf, tennis, rugby referees."
The new European venue created new opportunities.
"I think the other the other neat story is, you've got to look at what Grant [Dalton] did last year. He ran a global event in the middle of a pandemic, got people down here and negotiated free-to-air television online rights for an event people watched in awe."
The airline sold its last slots at Heathrow in 2020.