Flight Centre boss responds to cancelled Air NZ flights

Air New Zealand has been forced to cancel more flights for December. Photo / Brett Phibbs

Flight Centre NZ managing director David Coombes said Air New Zealand's announcement yesterday that it was cancelling Tasman flights this year would impact family wanting return as well as businesses.

Continued border uncertainty between New Zealand and Australia saw Air New Zealand cancel more than 1000 flights through to the end of December 2021.

Coombes told the AM Show the travel and tourism industry had 600 days in the equivalent of level 4 and they had done their time.

New Zealand was losing carriers and Air Tahiti and Niue had already diverted their flights elsewhere and other countries had capacity flooding in, he said.

"There's a limited number of aircraft available compared to pre-Covid so we need to get a move on for our people, for our customers, for our families and for our businesses - New Zealand Inc."

They were not seeing flights being more expensive at the moment in other markets and they were still competitive.

He said each carrier and country had different rules and the conditions were complicated and changing on a daily basis.

"What I'm hearing from people who are travelling is it's kind of the same largely, but with masks." Most carriers were also requiring passengers to be vaccinated.

Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson told Mike Hosking on Newstalk ZB this morning that the Government had been very clear that in the first part of next year it would move to self-isolation but it had to do that carefully and methodically.

Put to him that those travelling would be double vaxxed, Robertson said that was still not 100 per cent protection and it wanted to manage it for as long as they could.

Every change it made it looked at the impact it had and there would be further announcements around the border before Christmas.

For the past couple of years, it had been said Australia would leap ahead of New Zealand financially but it hadn't happened.

"We'll do what works best for New Zealand and we will have a reconnecting plan in the first part of next year."