Birthday treat on rescue copter

June McCabe

The Westpac executive in charge of sponsoring Auckland's rescue helicopter used one of the bank's free corporate flights on a birthday treat for her son and eight friends.

Corporate affairs director June McCabe organised for the Westpac helicopter to take the children on a 10-minute flight for her son's 6th birthday.

Ms McCabe, who has overall responsibility for the helicopter sponsorship deal, said she used a flight allocated for public relations activity "to give my son a treat".

It came from an allocation of five flights given to the bank under its sponsorship contract with the Auckland Rescue Helicopter Trust.

Ms McCabe is also a trustee of the Auckland Rescue Helicopter Foundation, set up to raise $7 million for a new rescue helicopter.

She said the flight was taken in her capacity as a Westpac executive and not as a foundation member.

Foundation chairwoman Michelle Boag last week called on the rescue helicopter to deliver her passport to Auckland Airport.

Realising she had left the passport at home on Waiheke Island, Ms Boag rang trust chief executive Rea Wikaira at 5.30am last Friday and he checked if the helicopter was available.

The chopper, with the mandatory crew of three including a paramedic, flew to Waiheke and then out to the helipad near the international terminal. Ms Boag paid the $4000 cost of the flight.

Ms McCabe said she viewed her son's birthday flight last October as public relations work.

"Within our agreement we do have entitlements to PR activity. From a Westpac point of view, I put [the birthday flight] in that arena, absolutely, because that's the only reason why I would enable that to happen."

Asked how her child's birthday party contributed to the promotion of Westpac Bank, Ms McCabe said: "It was an opportunity to give him a treat, as a mum, and to avail myself of an arrangement.

"I look after sponsorship. I also am well-networked and the kind of influence you can have because you give kids a treat, and the kids feel good and the parents feel good and guess what the parents do?

"The parents have the chequebook and they help out. So I did put it into that camp."

Ms McCabe said she approached Mr Wikaira about taking the flight as a treat for the children but "he gave no guarantees".

"[He said] give us a ring that morning and we'll see how we're placed."

Mr Wikaira said the trust had "contractual obligations" to Westpac and the flights usually doubled as training.

For the year to February 28, there were 40 "public relations" flights totalling 14.6 hours' flying time.

Fifteen were for sponsors (including Westpac), two were for schools, 11 were for the community, such as attending events, and 12 were for community demonstrations, such as winching demonstrations.

Mr Wikaira said people on PR flights were told that the helicopter was on standby.

If a job came in they would be returned to a safe place so the helicopter could continue to its work.

Asked if the flight for her son was a good decision, Ms McCabe said it was an "OK decision".

"We have so many flights we can use as give-aways, as thank-yous to people who put effort in, and being the person that I am I believe that if I can treat people within my network, in this case the kids whose parents say, 'This is fantastic'," it would benefit Westpac.

Westpac gives $2.5 million a year to the country's rescue helicopters.

Ms McCabe said she held a position on the rescue helicopter foundation to protect Westpac's sponsorship interests.

She is also a TVNZ board member and co-author of the book Woman2Woman, which tells the stories of successful New Zealand businesswomen.

A Westpac spokesman said Ms McCabe's flight was "just one of dozens" around the country.

He said PR flights were frequently used to reward people for charitable efforts such as fundraising for the helicopters.

For example, in Christchurch last year flights were given away as prizes for raffle ticket buyers.

The spokesman said fundraising efforts, in which flights were given as prizes, helped raise a lot of money for the rescue helicopters.