Air New Zealand to Cut 200 Full Time Jobs

Air New Zealand has confirmed that it is to lay off up to 200 full-time staff. The jobs affected are long haul cabin crew, recruitment, airline operations and technical operations planning and management.

Air New Zealand Chief Executive Officer Rob Fyfe said the airline has been reducing capacity to match customer demand over the past few months and as a result has been reviewing staffing levels.

"We have been working hard on a series of initiatives to minimise the need for redundancies. These include pilots taking leave without pay, giving staff on individual contracts the opportunity to work fewer hours, introducing part-time hours for cabin crew, not replacing non-safety sensitive roles, not renewing temporary contracts and a freeze on executive salaries," he said.

"However, it has become clear that these measures will not fully address the excess staff levels we now have as a result of these capacity reductions, especially in the long haul business where capacity is being reduced by eight percent when compared with the last financial year."

Mr Fyfe said Air New Zealand will commence consultation to disestablish up to 100 long haul cabin crew positions along with six jobs in recruitment and seven jobs in the airline operations area. Separate reorganisations are underway in subsidiary businesses, including Safe Air in Blenheim, with a small number of redundancies expected.

"We are also implementing a further phase of the technical operations restructure, which started in 2006. This will see up to 68 roles in the technical, planning and management areas disestablished to meet the new shape of the business and its current demand profile," Mr Fyfe said.

The airline expects that annualised savings from the redundancies and a current review of all spending should be in excess of $20 million.

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