Air New Zealand chief executive Greg Foran has said that while the airline is working to bring fares down, they are unlikely to go back to pre-pandemic levels.
This comes as Air New Zealand records an annual net profit of $412 million, following three years of pandemic losses.
Foran said that travel demand has been significant this year, which meant higher pricing.
He said that fares had gone up 30 to 35% on average since Covid.
"The most effective thing we can do to help customers is to welcome more aircraft into our fleet and put more seats in the sky."
Foran today also announced the airline would buy four new aircraft - two ATR turboprop aircraft for regional routes and two Airbus A321neos for the international short-haul network to Australia and the Pacific.
"That’s in addition to the existing domestic Airbus A321neo orders, and the eight new Boeing 787 we have coming into the fleet as we retire our Boeing 777-300s over time."
While adding more seats would help to reduce prices, Foran said costs in areas such as spare parts, new aircraft and airport landing charges were increasing, up to 50% in some cases.
"We're not going to go back to 2019 levels, I want to be clear about that."
He used North America as an example of where increased capacity could ease pricing, with 40% more seats expected by November this year.
"That's 10,000 seats a week flying between here and America."
He emphasised that if travellers booked early, they could get some "pretty good" prices.
Consumer NZ's Jessica Walker said that while it's great Air NZ has made a profit, she wants to see reinvestment of these profits so that New Zealanders can get better customer service, cheaper flights and more choices.
"We know there are so many factors that go into airline pricing, but at the end of the day we think it's really important that New Zealanders are able to trust that airlines are charging them fairly."
Foran said that in terms of customer service, Air New Zealand was "making progress on the things that matter to customers".
Contact centre wait times have, on average, reduced by 75% since December, and there have been improvements to reduce the number of delays and cancelled flights.
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