Responding to what it sees as an Asian market comeback, Air
New Zealand says it will be boosting its physical presence
to the region, with its three hubs as the focal point.
Grant Lilly, New Zealand's general manager - International
Sales & Marketing, told travelweeklyeast.com that the
airline saw growth from the region returning to pre-crisis
levels, and the carrier would boost its services
accordingly. "We will beef up Singapore as the major hub,
where we will be able to link into Singapore Airlines
services, to provide connections within Asia, and of course
critically to Europe. "We'll look to strengthen our
operations to Hong Kong, as our major hub point for North
Asia. There are significant hub points for New Zealand out
of North Asia. Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, China. And Hong
Kong is a good gateway to develop that through." No
specific dates for these boosts were yet available. In
contrast to reports by other industry commentators that the
carrier would be halting Asian expansion due to alliance
partnerships, Lilly said ANZ's were the opposite. "No, I
don't think anything we're doing with Star or SQ will mean
less presence in Asia in an operating sense. I think Asia's
now coming back strongly. We downsized a reasonably amount
of our capacity, and are now ramping that back up." Where
the difference would come would be using partners like SQ
to service passengers to these hubs from other Asian ports,
he said.