Alex Marren: Air New Zealand Chief Operating Officer on the busiest day of the holiday season

Air New Zealand will see more than 50,000 people today on its busiest day of the holiday season. 

The airline is expecting over three million customers between the December and holiday period. 

What can those flying today expect? 

Chief Operating Officer Alex Marren joins the show to discuss how Air NZ is tracking during this time. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
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Speaker 2 (00:16):
Yes, And if you're taking to the scars did I
Good luck to you. It's in New Zealand's busiest day
of the year, with more than fifty thousand people set
to fly across its domestic and international networks. Passengers are
being urged to check in and get to the airport
early and in New Zealand's Chief operating Officer, Alex Marin
joins me, good morning.

Speaker 3 (00:35):
Good morning, Tim. How are you today?

Speaker 2 (00:37):
I'm pretty good. You're gonna have a busy day, aren't you?

Speaker 3 (00:40):
Yes, indeed we are. Our teams have been preparing for today,
which is the busiest day of our holiday season. As
you said, over fifty thousand customers flowing through the airport.
I'm here out at Aklan Auckland Airport this morning and
things are flowing smoothly.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
How much planning goes into it? Is it just a
business as usual? Do you do extra sort of planning
when you're looking for a day like this?

Speaker 3 (01:01):
Definitely do extra planning. So everything from our hiring and
training making sure we've got everything ready for the busiest
days of the season. We're expecting well over three million
customers between the December and holiday periods.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
And has everything gone according to the plans?

Speaker 3 (01:18):
Yes, we're watching keeping our eye out for weather as
you mentioned a little bit earlier, but everything preparing. We're
monitoring that closely and making accommodations as needed to make
sure we can get our customers to their destinations.

Speaker 2 (01:33):
How comes the twenty seventh busy.

Speaker 3 (01:37):
Just a timing this year sometimes with the holiday in
the middle of the week we have. We were very
busy over last weekend as well, with some really peaked days.
A little bit of a slowdown on Christmas Day itself
in Boxing Day, but right back up as people do
the second half of their travel experience.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
And how was in New Zealand. How are you guys
actually tracking out of the break in terms of your
schedules and are you on time?

Speaker 3 (02:03):
Yeah, we are getting our customers to our destinations. I've
had a little bit of weather, but overall the operation
is operating quite quite well, and we're making sure that
we're keeping our customers up to date if there.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
Are any changes, any any engine issues and all that. Guy.

Speaker 3 (02:21):
Oh, our teams have been doing just a fantastic job.
Numbers have come in offered their holidays because we did
have one unplanned engine event and that aircraft is in
the hangar and getting prepared and ready to go for
later this evening.

Speaker 2 (02:37):
What's your message to those who are flying today, Just a.

Speaker 3 (02:41):
Couple of travel tips. Number one, If you are traveling,
especially with pets, oversized luggage, or if you need any
special assistance, we do recommend you get just a little
bit of extra time and reach out to our airport
teams for help. We also recommend that you get to
the gate at least thirty minutes before departure on a

(03:01):
domestic flight and forty five minutes on an international and
with the weather especially highly recorded, Men that everybody signed
up for the travel alerts and that way we can
provide everyone with real time updates on their flight.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
Actually, just I'm not sure if you'll have the daughter
on this, but in terms of the busiest time of
the day, what's the worst time going to be?

Speaker 3 (03:23):
We do have Our peaks are early in the morning,
usually between seven and ten am, and then there's another
peak later afternoon between four pm and eight pm.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
Excellent. Hey, thanks so much for your time. Alex. That's
Alex Marin. She is Chief operating officer for a New
Zealand and It's News Talk said B. It's coming up
ten past seven seven.

Speaker 1 (03:45):
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