Air New Zealand

Sepull moved from the United States to New Zealand to take up the role in May 2019.

Back then the airline’s executive team featured nine managers but in 2020 newly appointed chief executive Greg Foran reduced it to six as part of Covid-19 cost-cutting measures.

As a result long-serving executives Nick Judd, Mike Tod and John Whittaker were cut loose.

Soon after chief commercial and customer officer Cam Wallace resigned, followed by chief financial officer Jeff McDowall.

Today's flight is the last of five Air New Zealand services that have transported more than 700 workers from Apia to Auckland over the past six weeks under the Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) programme.

The result is down from the $101m the airline reported for the same period in 2019.

Ongoing restrictions on international travel to and from New Zealand resulted in the airline’s operating revenue falling 59 per cent to $1.2b in the first six months of the financial year.

As at February 23, the airline had short-term available liquidity of just over $700m, consisting of about $170m cash and $550m of undrawn funds on a $900m Crown loan facility Air New Zealand secured at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The airline today announced that anyone who currently has fares in credit will have until the end of June 2022 to make a new booking using their credit.

Travellers will have until June 2023 to take any rebooked travel, instead of having to complete it by the end of 2022.

Air New Zealand chief of customer and sales Leanne Geraghty said in a statement that the airline wanted to give more time for people who may want to travel beyond the Pacific or Australia.

She said the airline's domestic network is now running at 80 percent of its pre-Covid-19 capacity.

It reported a $454 million loss for the year ended June because the Covid-19 pandemic clipped its wings.

Air New Zealand's international flights dropped from more than 30,000 in 2019, to under 10,000 last year.

Overall passenger numbers fell from 17.6 million to 8.4 million.

It brought in more than 10 million items of PPE gear to help with the Covid-19 response, while its cleaning staff used over 45,000 litres of disinfectant on aircraft.

Chief executive Greg Foran said returning to normal levels of air travel would be complex.

The news comes swiftly after the airline confirmed that 40 long haul crew were last week recalled on fixed term contracts to accommodate changes to its international schedule, including new layover protocols for North American flights.

The recruitment drive is in addition to 175 narrowbody cabin crew being recalled from furlough in preparation for Tasman and Cook Island travel bubbles, and the hiring of regional cabin crew on fixed term contracts in four centres.

The staff member tested negative to the virus in New Zealand on 18 November but on arrival in Shanghai on 22 November returned a positive test.

Air New Zealand said the person was well and had no symptoms of Covid-19 - all other crew have returned negative results.

It said the positive case would remain in isolation while Air New Zealand and the Ministry of Health worked with Chinese authorities to bring the person home.

"Operating crew on layover in China go into a managed isolation hotel as a standard procedure.

The $60-and-under seats are available from the second half of November until mid February and are available to all of the airlines domestic locations.

Air New Zealand says the school holidays gave tourism a big boost and hopes the fares will encourage further travel.

Last month the national airline announced it was tapping into the $900 million government loan on offer to help it through the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In August Air New Zealand announced it posted an after-tax loss of $454m - one of the biggest corporate losses in New Zealand in recent memory.

The airline's chief financial officer, Jeff McDowall, has given notice he will leave after the completion of a planned capital raise mid-next year.

McDowall had been with the national carrier for more than 20 years, and was acting chief executive before the arrival of Greg Foran earlier this year.

The airline is now drawing on the $900 million government loan which is giving it time to tool at future options.

In a statement to the stock exchange, the airline said it was looking at how the Covid-19 pandemic may develop and the effect it would have on its operations, costs, aircraft needs, and capital needs.

It said the review should be done by early next year and if there was no further bad news caused by the pandemic it would plan to raise fresh capital by the middle of next year.