There has been good discussion on this on the more mainstream social media pages and a lot of good ideas have come up from that open and mature discussion.
My personal situation is that I regularly fly up to Auckland and the cost difference between driving (Mazda CX5 2 litre) and flying Air Chathams is negligible for me, about $70, with the benefits being not losing a day each way driving and winding kms on the clock. After a career that saw me drive up to 50,000kms a year, anytime I can be a passenger is a bonus to me. Also I find driving in and around Auckland to be far too stressful these days. If I fly, I have friends and family only too happy to be my Uber, and then there is Uber if all else fails.
I’ve had to fly short notice from Whakatāne to Auckland and the cost difference is quite significant compared to prebooking a few weeks out as I usually do.
I always check a Tauranga / Rotorua option before I look up Air Chathams as I have Airpoints through my credit card and Z app. Rarely is there much difference between the two, but if I can book early enough, Air Chathams wins with the free parking at Whakatāne Airport.
If the airport and service are lost, of course I will use the other options and it won’t wreck my life.
While there are the usual political opportunists trying to score points with the situation I believe if we ignore them and focus on looking for a solution within the community, one can be found.
The more serious social media pages show a clear understanding of what losing an air service will mean to the region with less opportunities for business training and therefore staff retention and careers, the effect no airport will have on land values, the need to be aware of people with private transport difficulties in accessing the Rotorua or Tauranga options and the general inconvenience of the extra costs and loss of productivity of losing the airport.
There is also the inevitable general downgrading of our ‘pedigree’ losing an air service has on our region.
There is very little ratepayers can do to assist this though.
The solution has to be based on users of the service and I think the proactiveness of the Chamber of Commerce in this leads to the solution.
At the same time all users will most likely have to accept less competitive fares.
The first step is with the airline itself. The airline has to have a business friendly timetable at the heart of a solution however. Then I think the business community needs to step up and form some sort of compact with Air Chathams where business users agree to pay ‘business class’ tickets. These are the same tickets as regular passengers but are more expensive and offer Air Chathams practical support from those most able to provide it, to the people who will benefit from it the most – our businesses.
Of course our local businesses will pass those costs on to us, their customers, but we customers should be getting better service and skills from these businesses anyway but it’s a more user friendly way to do this.
I really feel the landing fees isn’t a deal breaker here and it does offer a way for ratepayers to acknowledge the value of an air service that works for everyone without another huge rates hike to people who are already screwed by the changes to water costs brought about by the change in government that has made rates unaffordable for most of us.
The solution, if there is one, needs to come from the community, with the business community showing the way and more importantly, leading the way.
The loan is a loan and needs to be paid back, but there are ways to do that over perhaps a longer timeframe or with an interest charge attached.
Those are my thoughts.
