Low-cost airline looking for staff

By DANIEL RIORDAN

The co-founder of failed airline CityJet has resurfaced with a new budget carrier.

Steve Mosen, a former Air NZ pilot, was the managing director of CityJet, which collapsed in November 1999 after less than six months in the air, leaving behind debts of $2 million and 107 unemployed staff.

Mosen blamed Civil Aviation bureaucracy and an old boy aviation network for the failure, although the CAA had a different explanation.

Now, Mosen is back with Jump Airlines, seeking to hire pilots and engineers and aiming to fly between Auckland, Palmerston North, Wellington and Christchurch from next April, using two 171-seat Boeing 737-700 jets.

Jump placed an advertisement in last Friday's Business Herald, seeking pilots and engineers for a new operation planning to offer low-cost services on the main trunk starting April next year.

The ad promised "great conditions plus share options".

Respondents were asked to send one-page resumes to a Hotmail email address.

Mosen could not be reached for comment yesterday - he is believed to be in France - but he was reported over the weekend as saying Jump had planned to launch in March 2004, but brought its launch forward to take advantage of spare capacity in the aircraft market and cheaper leases, as well as uncertainty over Air NZ's plans.

Air NZ is expected to introduce no-frills, one-class services on most if not all of its domestic flights and some shorter-haul international routes.

Mosen said a chief executive and chief financial officer had been chosen and the airline would be headed by a seven-member board, including two non-executive directors.

He said the chief executive was a foreigner living in New Zealand, but was not former Air New Zealand chief Gary Toomey.

Companies Office records show only that the name Jump Airlines has been reserved.

Jump aims to list on the Stock Exchange after a few years and expand its operations beyond the main trunk.

Although launching airlines of any kind is usually seen as a good way to get rid of surplus money, Jump should at least be able to secure aircraft leases at favourable terms, given industry over-capacity.

The real test will be when Jump faces the inevitable backlash from Air NZ and Qantas.

CityJet was started by Mosen and Paul Webb in mid-1999 by turning Webb's five-year-old air freight carrier Tranzglobal into a budget commuter airline.

But it went into receivership five months later after being grounded by the Civil Aviation Authority for under-recording flight times, and amid concerns about its pilots' familiarity with the aircraft. Webb transferred his share of the business to Mosen two weeks before the collapse.

In recent years, a couple of budget carriers have flown the Tasman before collapsing.

K2000, the brainchild of Auckland entrepreneur Jeff Matthews, lasted five weeks from the end of 1999.

Matthews' consultant, Ewan Wilson, had earlier founded Kiwi International Air - based, like K2000, at Hamilton.

Kiwi collapsed in 1996 leaving thousands of passengers stranded and Wilson with four convictions for using a document with intent to defraud while at the airline's helm.

Air NZ responded to Kiwi by setting up its own budget arm, Freedom Air, which helped send its rival into oblivion, and still flies profitably.