Air NZ to make announcement about regional fleet
 

Air New Zealand Chief Executive Officer Rob Fyfe will make a significant announcement related to the airline’s regional fleet at 1pm Wednesday Auckland time.

Who wants to guess?

Single type for all the regionals?

Q400, ATR72-600 ?

If it's single type then Q400 would make sense to replace the Mount Cook ATRs and fit with the Air Nelson Q300s.

ATR is the rumour

Yuck... hopefully not...

I've flown the Mt Cook ATR-72-500s quite a bit in the last few years, they are fine. True, they aren't as cool as the old Avro 748s but it is an imperfect universe! :D
NZ isn't very big so you don't really need the 'near-jet' speeds of the Q400. I suspect the operating costs of the ATR may have some bearing on the matter too. We shall see.

Given the Q300 is no longer in production I assume these late model Q300s would have a decent resale value which would probably sway the numbers also???:confused:

I agree the ATR on paper seems to suit NZ better (no need for the extra speed, lower CASM), I just wonder if Air NZ might see longer-term synergies with the existing Q300s as the existing ATRs are no spring chickens? Then again as Damian suggests Air NZ may have a trick up their sleeve there too?

I hear it's 12 ATRs starting from 4Q 2012

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/travel/new...ectid=10760176

12 ATR72-600, subject to contract signing.