There will not be enough international flights to rebuild our tourism industry next summer if airlines are not given certainty within the next few weeks about when self-isolation requirements will be ditched, an Auckland Airport spokesperson says.
Aotearoa won't open fully to tourists until October under the government's staged reopening - with travellers still expected to self-isolate for seven to 10 days.
The prime minister has said self isolation may not be needed in the "not too distant future".
Auckland Airport aeronautical commercial manager Scott Tasker said airlines needed certainty now because they were currently planning their flight schedules for next summer, from October through to March.
"We don't think people will commit to travel to New Zealand if they have to take a self-isolation period and our airline customers are really concerned that they won't see the demands that they need in order to lay on flights to New Zealand either," Tasker said.
Realistically, people did not want to travel all the way to New Zealand to spend seven days isolating in a hotel, he said.
North American carriers have told the airport there was only 5 percent of normal travel demands in areas where self-isolation was in place. They would choose other destinations instead, Tasker said.
"If you're sitting at your headquarters of your airline in North America and Asia and you're looking at New Zealand versus another destination that is open and welcoming travellers, you're going to be pretty hesitant to deploy your aircraft to our country and to put your seats on sale, because you don't know that you're going to have the certainty of having any passengers on board that flight."
They needed to know within the next month to six weeks when self-isolation requirements would end, he said.
"And if they do not see confirmation of that they will not deploy their aircraft to New Zealand at the end of the year, and then the consequence of that is we won't be seeing the international visitors that we need to rebuild our international tourism industry, but also international aircraft bring 80 percent of our cargo capacity, so that will impact our high value exporters but also the import of essential goods."
Tasker also told Checkpoint the international flight movements at Auckland in 2021 were about the same as what they were 35 years ago.
"From an Auckland Airport perspective, 12 airlines flying to 22 international destinations. If we compare that to pre-Covid, we had 29 international airlines flying to 43 destinations.
"And if we look in the South Island it's even worse, there's currently one international airline flying to one destination.
"So we've got a long way to rebuild. And we're literally competing with other airports and countries for that international airline capacity. And at the moment, we don't look like a very attractive place for an airline to invest the resources."
