Duane Emeny: Air Chathams CEO calls for government support as jet fuel prices rise

The Government's under pressure to act to ensure airlines can continue operating. 

Air New Zealand's raised fares due to rising jet fuel costs, increasing domestic fares by $10, short-haul fares by $20, and long-haul fares by $90. 

Air Chathams has also raised its standard fare by $20. 

Chief Executive Duane Emeny told Ryan Bridge the Government could be playing a role in helping the industry out. 

He says they could focus on aviation and start working on things to support airlines should the conflict continue. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
A local airlines putting out an sos to the government.
Jet fuel prices have almost doubled since the beginning of
the war in Iran air New Zealand's and strife. They're
hiking international fears by up to ninety bucks. Smaller players
in trouble too. Dwayne m and a Air Chatham CEO
with me this morning. Dwayne, good morning, Yeah, very good morning, Row.
Are you yeah, very well, thank you. You'll be watching
the price of jet fuel pretty closely. Has it come

(00:22):
back at all?

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Yeah, definitely watching it a lot more than it was
two weeks ago. Yet it has come back. Just check
this morning. I think it's sitting around eighty five dollars
a barrel for Brent crude. The jet fuel price that
crack spreads a little bit harder to get my hands on,
but good to see that that Brent crude price dropping.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
At this stage. Are you putting up prices?

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Yeah. Here, we're following suit with the other regional and
the airlines within New Zealand. We're looking at a twenty
dollars increase to our standard fares, which obviously is not
going to cover all of this escalation, but it helps
a little bit. So we did that overnight. Our team
were working on that overnight.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
Does that effect demand, do you think or do people
just going to fly with you anyway and wear it
for now?

Speaker 2 (01:14):
Well? I hope they'll still fly with us. I think
it's quite important that they do. But that is the balance, right.
The more you put the price up, the more unaffordable
it becomes, and people just don't travel, and then it's
a worse situation for an airline when that happens.

Speaker 1 (01:29):
What do you want the government to do?

Speaker 2 (01:32):
Yeah, So I've been having a lot of thought about
this the last couple of days. I think the key
thing we're really asking for is just a more proactive approach. Right,
so we all know this is a really volatile situation.
It's changed and escalated quickly in just a matter of days.
So what I think we really want the government to
do is say, well, you know, if this thing pushes
out past the month, two months, three months, what can

(01:55):
we actually do tangibly to support regional air kind activity?
And there are a number of options to know that
I spoke recently about some of them, which are those
costs that the government may have some control over through
SOEs and regulatory departments. So I think it's really just

(02:15):
if you've got this Ministerial committee sitting together and you're
thinking about these things, you know, have a specific focus
on aviation, and say, well, proactively, what could we do,
what could we start working on now? It's put a
mechanism in place to support these guys if it goes longer.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
Have you had any money come through from the regional airlines,
the loans for regional airlines, the money that the government announced?

Speaker 2 (02:39):
No, no, we're working through it. So you know, it
is a process. There's a lot of tax payer money,
so we've got to do it proptly. So we've been
working with Carnoa and hopefully by the end of this
month the Ministerial Group will meet and make some decisions
on that.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
Dwaine, appreciate your time this morning. Dwayne M and E. E.
Chatham's CEO.

Speaker 2 (03:00):
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