The NZ Herald today carries the news that EVA is about to discontinue direct services to Taiwan and that Thai is thinking of ending direct services to Thailand. In both cases, the airlines feed onto a global network.
As an economy we need more, not fewer, carriers flying here.
This news makes us think again of the opportunity we foolishly turned away of having Auckland Airport owned by the same people who own Emirates.
And it makes us wonder again about the opportunity going missing for airlines to operate longer haul services out of Wellington. In part this is dependent on availability of suitable planes to fly these services (the Boeing 787 would seem the perfect plane for services out of Wellington, but it has yet to roll off the production line). Point to point is the way of the future. We commend the work being done by Wellington Airport to promote creative thinking by airlines about this opportunity.
