Paul Holmes: Going the extra (air) mile

This is not a puff piece for Air New Zealand, although there is a lot to praise at Air New Zealand. I fly regularly the Auckland-Hawke's Bay route and the service I get at both ends is always relaxed, funny, friendly and accommodating. But the other night I was master of ceremonies as the airline held an awards ceremony to honour staff who were celebrating 40 years of service to the company.

Forty years with one company! That tells you a lot about the culture of a business. It tells you how good its selection process was 40 years ago and it speaks volumes about mutual loyalty between an employee and the business. The 40-year people were from right across the business, from engineering, sales, management, logistics, IT, everything.

But then we moved on to some special awards in which Air New Zealand honoured staff members whose service to the company and its customers in the last year went beyond the call of duty. They called these the "We're Impressed" awards. The people nominated had no idea they were being nominated. Their nominations came from colleagues.

I think the "We're Impressed" awards are a lesson for any business facing hard times and hard decisions, which still needs to reward loyalty and get the best out of its people. Air New Zealand has a hard row to hoe at the moment, and there have been many painful redundancies, of course.

But let me tell you about some of the people honoured by the firm. And let me tell you, too, that I sat watching these people, hearing their stories and felt very humble.

There was Penny Howard, a customer liaison specialist in Auckland, someone who deals both with compliments and complaints from customers about the service they received. Penny is a nice, normal, motherly woman based in North Shore City. On New Year's Eve last year, a 7-month-old baby boy called Brian was about to be stranded in Vancouver because of a ticketing mix-up.

His grandparents were booked on the Vancouver to Nadi flight and could not change their tickets, but if they took the flight, Brian would have to stay behind with an aunt and uncle. The grandparents were obviously distressed and worried. Uncle and aunt in Vancouver had commitments and could not make the trip even if Brian's ticket issues were sorted out later. What to do about Brian?

Air New Zealand made the decision to send a company escort. Assured of this, the grandparents boarded their scheduled flight.

A volunteer was called for to take Brian from Vancouver to Nadi. Now, bear in mind this was New Year's Eve. Penny had her own family to care for and be with during the holiday period. Despite that, Penny put her hand up. In a matter of hours she organised herself for the flight to Vancouver. She bought toys for the little boy to occupy him on the long flight. She got to Vancouver, spent time with the little boy's relatives to assure them everything was going to be fine, hopped on another long haul flight and delivered Brian safely to his grandparents in Fiji. She came home, having missed the New Year's celebrations with her family entirely.

There was Graeme Douglas, a 737 captain, a veteran of 29 years with Air New Zealand. Graeme was nominated by a colleague after direct flights from Auckland to Queenstown and back on a brilliantly fine day last November. The country was laid out clearly and beautifully beneath the aircraft. He had 100 passengers each way, mostly overseas tourists. Graeme got on the public address system all the way, describing every river, mountain, valley, lake and town they passed over.

With brightness and enthusiasm, Graeme shared his love and knowledge of our country. Passengers were said to have got off the flights fizzing with delight. Graeme also goes in regularly to the training centre in Auckland on his days off, full of ideas about improvements to training procedures.

There was Alice-Ann Atoa, who works in customer services at Wellington Airport. Alice was due to have a few days off. Her last job at the end of her last day was to meet a blind passenger with her two children and a guide dog. The blind mother told Alice-Ann she was going to take the "Flyer" bus to her home way up in Silverstream, a 45-minute ride. Alice-Ann escorted the woman, her children and the guide dog to the bus stop, then went back inside to collect her bag and finish off for the day.

When she went back outside, the woman was still waiting. Alice-Ann struck up a conversation with her. Alice-Ann began to realise that the woman was going to have a long way to walk when she got off the bus at Silverstream. Alice-Ann suggested a shuttle bus, but the woman had only $20 on her.

Alice-Ann decided the decent thing would be to drive the woman home herself. First she dealt with one of the children having what was described as a "bathroom accident" and then she got water for the dog. When she went to her car, she remembered it was loaded up with her children's bikes. Alice-Ann drove home to Lyall Bay and unloaded them. She went back, picked up the blind woman and her family and took them home to Silverstream.

My favourite, however, amongst all of these golden people, was Joseph Reich. Joseph works for Air New Zealand at Wellington Airport. Earlier this year, a woman described as an "international flight nurse" left a small fortune's worth of medical equipment in the overhead locker of a 737 when she got off a flight in Auckland - $7000 dollars' worth. The nurse had been working on a difficult case. She was wrung out emotionally and very jet-lagged. Around to baggage tracing in Auckland she went, where they found out the aircraft was now in Wellington.

Enter Joe Reich. Joe, in Wellington, was on the phone to the nurse in Auckland. He could tell she was very distressed. Joseph rushed round and arranged for the equipment to get back to Auckland and to be held overnight for the woman to collect in the morning. But there was a miscommunication. When the aircraft got back to Auckland the equipment was not removed before it took off again for Christchurch, the gear still up there in the overhead locker on its merry tour.

Joe was embarrassed. Without telling anyone, he bought with his own money a ticket to Auckland for the next day, which was supposed to be his day off. In Auckland, he met the aircraft when it arrived from Christchurch and went and retrieved the gear himself. Then he took a taxi into the Viaduct to deliver the valuable goods to the nurse personally. The nurse, by the way, was a Gold Elite member, and had the right to expect very good treatment, but Joseph did not know this until just before he took off from Wellington to handle things in Auckland. To Joe, the woman was simply a passenger in distress and he needed to help her. And he knew also the airline had messed up and he wanted to help redeem it.

Now, the thing about Joe is this. He did it entirely off his own bat. The only way management found out about the service Joseph was giving was because he told the story to a cabin attendant on the way to Auckland. She nominated him for an award.

Here is another thing about Joe. He has a disability in his legs. He walks jerkily, with some difficulty. But there is nothing disabled about Joe's heart.

These are stories about people helping others in difficulty, in this case their customers, out of the goodness of their hearts. Air New Zealand is lucky to have Penny and Alice-Ann and Joseph and their fellow nominees - they are examples to us all.

With our booming tourist industry, we are increasingly a service country. And in any service industry it is, in the end, all about the people. You can have the flashest gear in the world but in the end, if you don't have the people, you don't have nuttin'.