Air NZ accuses Origin Pacific of 'abandoning' passengers

Air New Zealand has accused Origin Pacific of "abandoning" its stranded passengers and misleading them by telling them that the national carrier would honour their travel arrangements.

The regional airline collapsed last night after it failed in its bid to find an investor to make an urgent multi-million dollar injection of capital.

Origin Pacific managing director Robert Inglis said talks had been held with Air New Zealand on Wednesday evening.

He believed an arrangement acceptable to both parties had been reached on the rescue of stranded passengers. However, he had since been told that deal was off.

Air New Zealand chief financial officer Rob McDonald said this morning it was "extremely concerned that Origin has abandoned its customers in such a cavalier manner" and was continuing to tell its customers arrangements had been made for them to travel on Air New Zealand.

Mr McDonald was planning to fly to Nelson today to seek a meeting to clarify Air New Zealand's position on any rescue of passengers.

"Based on the information that Origin Pacific has released to the market, it is operating as a solvent business that is capable of paying its bills," he said.

"However, it seems to have unilaterally decided it can abandon its thousands of customers despite having accepted payment of in excess of $1 million for their fares."

Air New Zealand wanted to establish what had happened to the money passengers had paid for their fares before any decision would be made on re-accommodating them, Mr McDonald said.

Origin Pacific spokesman Brendon Burns said between 700 and 800 passengers had their travel plans affected today. Up to 6000 would be affected until the end of this month, and up to 20,000 forward bookings had been made. Some of those may have cancelled once rumours of the airline's difficulties got out this week.

He said he was unaware of any meeting between Mr McDonald and Origin managers.

In the meantime, Origin was telling passengers to contact alternative carriers, including Air New Zealand.

Mr Burns said Origin had an obligation to pay for the airfare as booked. The further ahead a passenger booked, the cheaper the fare.

If a passenger who had a cheap fare booked in advance with Origin tried to travel today on Air New Zealand, there would be a difference in the fare which the passenger would have to fund themselves.

Mr Burns added: "We no longer have a passenger services company. Our call centre staff lost their jobs last night."

He said there was a "handful of management staff trying to do their best" but they could not deal with hundreds of passengers and he advised them to call alternative carriers.

- NZPA