Air NZ to cancel around 1100 flights amid fuel crisis

Air New Zealand is to cancel around 1100 flights through to the end of next month, affecting around 44,000 passengers.

The airline earlier this week said it had raised prices and was looking at amending its flight schedules in response to the global fuel crisis caused by the Iran war. It had also suspended its earnings guidance.

Speaking to RNZ this morning, chief executive Nikhil Ravishankar said the changes were about a 5% reduction in the number of flights it would operate.

During that period, it would operate about 22,000 flights and carry around 1.9 million passengers.

Most of the passengers would be moved onto other flights. The cancellations were focused on off-peak services and were mostly domestic.

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It was not looking at cutting routes.

"Route or frequency consolodation is something that we do as a business as usual practice and this is just a version of that. In this case of course it's very specificly related to optimising fuel costs," Ravishankar said.