Good Evening All:
A good post from "Clunkdriver" who as you can assume has a wealth of experience (military, airline and commercial) in calling a spade a &^%$ shovel.
To add to my previous post basing on my recent holiday in New Zealand and talking to the locals on their aviation life. To restate New Zealand has a population of just over 4 million people.
Emirates has four daily flights to New Zealand three daily to Auckland (AKL) and one to Christchurch (CHC). AKL has three daily of which one is an A-380 (489 seats) and two B-777 (380 seats) and the other to CHC being a B-777 (380 seats). Seat Guru was used as a source for the number of seats.
In one year, again New Zealand being a country of 4 million people that is 594,585 seats that Emirates has to New Zealand.
So with that uplift capability what does this do for Air New Zealand and their small fleet? After flying on them they have a superior product with very helpful staff.
The five years that Clunkdriver alludes to might be too late for this fine airline.
Do we want a foreign "family compact" run airline in our country? I would say yes but with sizeable conditions in place and the first one is an apology to Canada for the 30 day move out for Camp Mirage. How ever that will never happen as based on my limited experience of being in the middle east "face" is more important to them and this would be viewed as a sign of weakness.