Issue 114: January/February 1996

When you think of all the time all of the major airlines have had to do something innovative, creative and logical on the trans Tasman and typically it’s not until a new entrant hocks itself to the hilt to give reality to its dream that the heavies then decide to wade in too, not so much to serve the market, but to ensure that the new airline has a hard time of it.

With unanimous approval therefore, the team at AA proudly gives Air New Zealand our “Non Originality Award Of The Decade”.

It will be interesting to see how this blatant copying effort works out for ANZ. Kiwi holds a similar public perception and level of support in New Zealand that during its brief life the original Compass did in Australia. One major reason so many people supported Compass was to give Australian and Ansett a kick up the collective butt after so many years of non competition via the Government imposed Two Airline Policy. Whilst this was not totally the fault of the airlines the TAP did provide them with a greenhouse environment that nicely suited their comparatively relaxed day to day corporate lifestyle.

Kiwi then put its money where its mouth was, wet leased a hushkitted 727 and proved the concept a goer operating out of Hamilton in the North Island and Dunedin in the South. So popular was the concept that the little airline has now upgraded to a long term lease with a Boeing 757 from Air 2000 in the UK. Kiwi Kiwi’s new Boeing 757 on finals for Sydney. Maybe Qantas and Ansett will now be so original as to also lease in ‘fleets’ of single 757s to childishly try and trump each other. Stranger things have happened in the wonderful world of aviation. (Julian Green)

New Zealand is little different and ironically its national carrier has never been held in great regard by the population at large. This was one major reason why the NZ government moved a decade ago to actually invite Ansett to commence operations domestically. The result of course, albeit at great long term cost to Ansett, has been a massive increase in customer service standards, terminals, lounges and frequency. Consequently, the NZ population is fully aware of the need for competition and it is thus expected that most will feel so indignant by the blatant copying of the Kiwi product by ‘big brother’ that it will only reinforce Kiwi’s overall popularity. Certainly their forward bookings through the December/January period were very strong despite the significant increase in capacity available. This is at least the Kiwi thinking on the subject and we are inclined to agree with them. The thing is that when Mount Cook launches its first 757 service the press will be focusing more on why they are doing it rather than asking what benefit it might be to the community at large. It will be interesting to see what occurs from this childish and unoriginal piece of ‘me-too-ism’. Kiwi is now looking further afield to destinations such as Rarotonga and Hawaii, markets that its small and lateral thinking management team feel are not sufficiently serviced by their national carrier.

So what happens? You guessed it. Air New Zealand (ANZ) carefully notes the success that Kiwi is enjoying through its hard work and sense of innovation and decides to copy it right down to the aircraft type, incidentally a type that has never ever before even remotely interested the folk in Auckland. Amazing. ANZ even duplicates the route structure and so as to try and publicly distance itself from the incredible non originality of this blatant example of plagiarism it uses its wholly owned Mount Cook Airline subsidiary as the fall guy. Mount Cook is now faced with operating a lone 235 seat Boeing 757 when until recently the largest and most complex aircraft in its fleet were ‘sixties vintage 44 seat Hawker Siddeley 748s.