Air New Zealand’s lawyers are looking at how insurance could cover losses from the two-week fuel shortage and whether there was any other action it could take.
Chief executive Christopher Luxon said the disruption caused by the fuel pipeline failure would not materially affect earnings in the current year – although there had been a financial impact, according to a report from the
NZ Herald.
“It's quite hard to run an airline with only 30% of the fuel so we've had a lot of focus on that in the last two weeks, but from now, with our commercial focus, we'll start to look at what insurance options we have and any other remedies we may have as well,” Luxon said.
Luxon said passengers would not pay through fares for losses suffered by Air New Zealand.
“I think it’s a timely wake-up call for us to sit around the table and consider what the critical infrastructure New Zealand needs, so this won't happen again,” he said. “Irrespective of which government emerges – that’s going to be a focus area for them, and we've obviously got a lot of energy around that subject.”
While disruptive for some passengers, the airline said it has managed to transport most of its 40,000 passengers a day.
“We did have some disruptions and delays but in the context of what we were dealing with, there were a relatively small number of customers affected,” Luxon said.
The airline was 70% hedged on fuel, prices had recently been higher than earnings assumptions and it remained volatile, the report said.
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