Jay Kuten: Air NZ buck stops with Govt

TAKING FLIGHT: Saved by our tax dollars, Air New Zealand is turning its back on Whanganui. PHOTO/FILE

IF THERE is one thing upon which Americans, thoroughly polarised in their politics, can agree, it is that everyone hates the airlines.

It is not simply the long waiting times in security lines causing missed flights ... it is that the feeling conveyed by the airline companies themselves is that their customers should be grateful to have any service at all.

These privately owned air corporations are able, as result of government deregulation, to exert disproportionate power over their consumers, charging fees for every conceivable option (the loo was briefly mooted) while providing the bare minimum of service.

As private corporations, theoretically these airlines are responsible (if at all) to their shareholders. In practice, only to well-paid top management.

It is from that perspective that I come to consider Air New Zealand's sudden and unexpected announcement on May 30 that it would cease to provide service to Whanganui.

This whole thing doesn't pass the smell test.

It turns out that Air NZ's decision to quit us in favour of Palmerston North is not quite so sudden and not so unexpected.

For one thing, there's the recent advert campaign by Palmy Airport extolling their virtues. Surely they wouldn't spend the money unless they got a heads-up for a go-ahead.

Our mayor and council had had some warning as the May 28 letter by Annette Main asking for a year's extension makes clear.

The council website says: "We appreciate the support we have received from Whanganui MP Chester Borrows, government ministers and staff who share our concerns about the cancellation of the Air New Zealand service."

Again, this suggests that ongoing efforts on the part of Mr Borrows and other (unnamed) Government ministers have been "sharing concerns" on Air NZ's quitting us for some (unstated) period of time.

I would have liked to add my appreciation except that I, as an ordinary citizen, have been kept entirely in the dark about this impending, seriously damaging blow to our whole community with its culmination in a further shift of our assets to those of Palmerston North.

If indeed, beyond the letter of Ms Main, anything was actually done by MP Borrows or others of his government to try to save our airline service - and by extension a big chunk of our economy - no one I know has heard anything about it.

At the least, what we got here (as in Paul Newman's Hud) is a failure to communicate.

The patronising attitude by those informed - mayor, councillors, MP Borrows, ministers - and neglecting to keep us informed in a proper and timely fashion aside, this decision of Air NZ could not have happened without the approval of Government at the level of Bill English and the Prime Minister.

It doesn't take a conspiracy theorist to see why.

Air NZ is not a private corporation. You and I are the shareholders. We own that airline - or, at least, 53 per cent of it.

A bit of history is in order here - the current company became our national carrier when our government bought out Australia's share in 1965.

It was privatised in 1989 but bad business decisions by management brought it to the brink of receivership in 2001.

It was saved when the government renationalised it with $885 million of taxpayer money. The current Government reduced our ownership to 53 per cent through controversial asset sales in 2013. The airline has been consistently profitable.

We need to be holding our local MP, as representative of that Government, accountable. Not only is the decision to move from here irresponsible but, in the absence of warnings or of real numbers of passengers (numbers that have been steady enough for 20 years to require three Auckland flights daily), this decision seems wholly of a piece with the Government's past neglect of this city and its future intentions.

For me, personally, as the airlines acknowledge, we have choice when we fly.

For an airline willing to accept my tax dollars with no concomitant consideration, it'll be a very long day before I fly Air New Zealand.

-Jay Kuten is an American-trained forensic psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand for the fly fishing. He spent 40 years comforting the afflicted and intends to spend the rest afflicting the comfortable.