Revealed: Greg Foran’s Air NZ flight plan

His first three years in the job was dominated by the pandemic, but now Air New Zealand’s high-flying chief executive Greg Foran can finally make his mark on the 51 per cent state-owned national carrier.

“We want to be the world’s leading digital airline. We want to exceed in our value for customers and our staff in a very digital way,” Foran told Markets with Madison.

“But, I recognise that in any business, the right to do that is earned by doing the basics brilliantly.”

And it wasn’t - yet.

He equated the carrier’s restart from Covid-19 with a turbulent take-off from Wellington.

Despite its return to profitability in the last financial year, with airfares costing on average 30 to 35 per cent more, the airline’s revenue per available seat kilometre was down 14 per cent year to date across its network.

Foran said with the increased cost of doing business, including 50 per cent increases in some international airport landing charges, he could justify hiking domestic airfares by 5 to 10 per cent - but he won’t because that would undoubtedly harm the airline’s longer-term value.

“I’m prepared to give away some short-term opportunities to ensure that long-term we do the right thing.”

It was targeting earnings of between $180 million and $230m in the current six-month period, assuming the jet fuel price doesn’t move around much more.

Air New Zealand’s shares are priced at 66 cents, down 12 per cent in the year to date, or by 64.7 per cent over the past five years.

It paid investors a special 6-cent dividend last financial year. Now the time had come to reward customers.

“We refer to it as running the business like a Swiss watch. On time.”

Talking about technology, Foran predicted the travel industry was in for “a heck of a lot of change” in the next 20 years.

“Isn’t it time we had something new?”

Watch Greg Foran discuss his flight plan for the airline in today’s episode of Markets with Madison above.

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Madison Reidy is the host of New Zealand’s only financial markets show Markets with Madison. She joined the Herald in 2022 after working in investment, and has covered business and economics for television and radio broadcasters.