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Air New Zealand customers have donated nearly 250,000 frequent flyer points to three charities, which have been able to redeem them on essential services such as food, heating and petrol.
So far, passengers have donated 90,000 ‘Airpoints Dollars’ to KidsCan, 60,000 to New Zealand Red Cross and 100,000 to Women’s Refuge.
Last month, Australian Aviation reported that the airline launched its pioneering ‘Carepoints’ imitative based on feedback from customers.
Air New Zealand general manager loyalty Kate O’Brien said, “We’ve been blown away by the generosity of our Airpoints members.
“The average donation was 81 Airpoints Dollars per person, and we’ve had several individual donations of more than 2,000 Airpoints Dollars, which is incredibly kind.”
The business’ frequent flyer scheme is branded Airpoints and customers can usually earn more “Airport Dollars” by flying with Air New Zealand or Star Alliance airlines.
The move comes after previous coronavirus gestures including donating 8,000 in-flight blankets, now no longer in use, to organisations and shipping 2,000 treats, including 190 boxes of Cookie Times and One Square Meal bars, to essential workers in police stations, hospital and charities.
Earlier this week, Air New Zealand said it would add another 268 one-way services to its schedule during the July school holidays, in addition to the increases announced last week.
The new batch of flights to regional areas will operate between 6 July and 19 July and includes 14 return services between Wellington-Nelson and 13 services between Christchurch-Invercargill and Christchurch-Palmerston North.
It comes after the airline surprisingly revealed it will actually offer more capacity on its Auckland-Queenstown route during the July school holidays next month than it did last year.
Air New Zealand is now operating to all 20 domestic ports it serviced pre-coronavirus and has dropped social distancing in line with the country lowering its coronavirus restrictions to ‘Alert Level 2’.
