Shortage of planes shuts out tourists

By SCOTT MacLEOD transport reporter

The Qantas NZ collapse has left too few airline seats to handle package tours to the two top tourist destinations.

Rotorua and Queenstown lost the services of the airline's British Aerospace 90-seat whisper jets, big enough to carry tour groups of 50 people but small enough to land at the regional centres, when Qantas NZ went into receivership on April 21.

Rotorua Airport manager Bob Wynn said the number of airline seats available there daily had gone from 288 to 198 - a 31 per cent fall.

Tour groups have asked other airlines to help fill the gaps left by Qantas NZ, but so far there has been little relief.

The Agrodome Leisure Park, one of Rotorua's busiest tourist attractions, has had 500 cancellations in three weeks.

Managing director Warren Harford said he understood one American operator would pull out of New Zealand unless the problem was fixed by September.

It was easing, but only because tourism was entering a seasonal lull.

Mr Harford, who is also vice-president of the Inbound Tour Operators Council, said Rotorua was visited by 1.2 million tourists a year, a third of them from overseas.

It was a vital ingredient in package tours, and other centres would suffer unless the problems were fixed.

"Rotorua is an icon. Where else can you see Maoris and thermal? We just ain't got the capacity to fly groups."

Groups from Asia, averaging eight or nine days a stay, were struggling to get direct flights to Rotorua from Queenstown or Christchurch.

"They have to fly to Auckland, bus to Rotorua and bus back to Auckland again to catch their international flights.

"It's dropping their stay in Rotorua from two or three nights to one."

Tourism NZ chairman Peter Allport said his organisation was talking to the airlines, but there was little else it could do.

There has been little relief for Air NZ, which has had to put on up to 140 extra flights weekly in other centres to cover for its defunct rival.

A spokesman for Australia's Qantas Airways, Michael Sharp, said his airline planned to use Nelson-based Origin Pacific as a feeder from smaller centres such as Rotorua.

But Origin's 18-seat Metroliners are too small for the tour groups.

Virgin Blue is also talking about Rotorua, but its new Boeing 737-700s are too big for the airport.

Air NZ-owned Mt Cook Airlines flies 66-seat ATR72 planes into Rotorua, but it doesn't have enough of them to make up for the shortage.

Mr Harford said problems at Rotorua and Queenstown would flow on to the whole tourist industry, our biggest earner of foreign cash. Tourists spend more than $12 billion in New Zealand each year and inject $463 million into the Rotorua economy alone.

Delays and booking problems are scaring overseas firms worried that they will have to pay refunds if their tours deviate from those advertised.

Pan Pacific Travel managing director Matt Brady, of Auckland, said he knew of four or five overseas tour firms that were very concerned and could pull out as a last resort. The firms were big, each sending up to 10,000 tourists here a year.

Mr Brady said his firm had to drive one group from Rotorua to Auckland to catch a plane to Queenstown, because it could not book a direct flight. There were also problems with Dunedin and Southland.

"We have some horror stories. Another group had to leave Queenstown at midnight to catch a flight from Christchurch to Auckland."

One of the international firms is AATKings of Melbourne, which sends 3000 people here a year.

A spokesman for AATKings, Ian Bougen, said the problem would become critical unless it was sorted out for the October season.