Kiwijet promises freight services as well as passengers on NZ and Aust routes
- Friday, 09 February 2007
WHEN the Kiwijet Airline Company went public at the beginning of May with plans to set up a new LCC operation within New Zealand using B737-300 aircraft, the initial market reaction was one of polite scepticism. But Kiwijet is for real and its LCC model is interesting in that it factors in a night freight operation.
Whether there is sufficient demand for another domestic cargo operator in New Zealand has been debated since Origin Pacific, which utilised its fleet cost-effectively for night cargo, bit the dust last year.
As we reported at the time, successful entrepreneur Mike Pero considered starting a new freight line but subsequently opted to set up a company selling freight space on Pacific Blue flights.
Freightways, through its cluster of courier operations and cargo airline division (which flies Convair freighters), picked up Qantas domestic freight, while other existing operators also gained some business.
The brains behind kiwijet is believed to be Patrick Weil who was associated with the formation of Easyjet in the UK and later worked as a senior executive for the American LCC Air Tran.
A search of the companies register shows that Patrick Weil holds all 50 million shares in the airline company. He has an address in Deerfield Beach, Florida, while the company is registered to an address in Christchurch.
A statement from the company said that initial operations would be on the trunk route between Auckland, Christchurch, Dunedin and Invercargill — Wellington, it seems, is to miss out for the time being.
Longer term plans are to go trans-Tasman, said the statement, mooting the possibilities of Wellington-Canberra, Auckland-Newcastle (which Air New Zealand’s Freedom Air once flew but could not build sufficient traffic to sustain), Christchurch-Hobart (flown and abandoned by both Australian and New Zealand airlines) and Rotorua-Sydney.
“Other unique offerings will include ‘Moonlight Special’ fares on late night flights AKL/CHC and CHC/AKL where only cabin baggage will be allowed with the customer,” said the airline statement. “This concept will enable us to accommodate post and parcels in the cargo hold of the aircraft.”
Weil also has indicated an interest in buying Jet Connect which currently operates Qantas domestic routes in New Zealand and some of the airline’s trans-Tasman flights.
Air New Zealand reacted angrily to the Kiwijet announcement, saying that it was also planning a new LCC and warning staff not to divulge any of these plans.
Kiwijet in turn responded with a comment that it was flattered by Air New Zealand’s plans. It criticised Air New Zealand’s “emotional statements” and warned that further comments along these lines “will prompt us to take immediate legal action against any parties that make such statements”.
