Air New Zealand reports strong profits and that in the 2023 financial year it’s statutory earnings were $574 million and have pledged rewards for customers and shareholders with the profits as a result.
Over the past year the demand for seats has exceeded expectations.
Air New Zealand have said this led to “a rapid recovery” and has led to the ability to fund aircraft, digital investments and facilities.
Market Demand
For a financial year that began when borders were still reopening and aircraft remained in storage for a number of carriers, Air New Zealand have seen a challenging period prove positive.
With constrained market capacity across the entire industry they found themselves able to capitalise on the demand as it increased.
Air New Zealand Chief Executive Officer Greg Foran said: “the result follows a year in which the airline balanced customer, staff, community, and shareholder needs, while making investments for the years ahead”
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The end of the financial period sees the airline running at 94% of pre-COVID capacity for domestic routes and 71% on it’s international routes.
With a fully restored international network the focus has been turned to further investment, having carried out the biggest recruitment drive in history and returned all it’s aircraft to the skies.
A positive board outlook
Greg Foran continues: “A strong Air New Zealand is good for New Zealand. We have rehired and trained in a tight labour market, lifted the starting wage for the airport teams to $30 an hour and improved the way we work with digital systems on the ground and in the air.
“Restoring services to 500 flights a day is not only good for Kiwis who’ve been able to take that long planned holiday, but it has also brought tourist dollars back to the regions and supports exporters who rely on regular air freight.
Fleet investment
The airline has said that on top of the increased wages for front line staff and work on a new engineering hangar there will be benefits for shareholders. This comes as a fully imputed special dividend of 6.0 cents per share.
Recognising how key the fleet configuration, availability and efficiency has been to the sturdy position over the past few months there’s going to be significant investment there too.
Greg Foran details: “Today we also announced an order for two new ATR turboprop aircraft for regional routes, as well as two new Airbus A321neos for our international short-haul network.”
“That’s in addition to the existing domestic Airbus A321neo orders, and the eight new Boeing 787 Dreamliners we have coming into the fleet as we retire our Boeing 777-300s over time. And we’re retrofitting our 14 787’s with the new Business Premier LuxeTM and refreshed cabin product.”
Although this report of Air New Zealand strong profits is fuelling great investment it should be noticed that given the uncertainty and volatility in the industry they are still cautious and haven’t issued any guidance over predictions for the 2024 period.
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