Air New Zealand is trialling the use of a camera carrying wall climbing robot to inspect hard to reach surfaces on its aircraft. “Currently to inspect the top of the fuselage, as we do following incidents such as lightning strikes, engineers need to work at heights of up to eight metres,” Air New Zealand chief operations officer Bruce
Finnair’s Australian boss Geoff Stone says stopping over in Asia on the way to Europe is coming back into favour amid geopolitical tensions in the Middle East. Although Finnair does not serve this market with its own aircraft, the airline has codeshare arrangements with British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, as well as interline agreements
Cathay Pacific has boosted the strength of its Hong Kong hub with the reopening of business class lounge “The Pier” as it takes the fight up to its rivals for premium passengers amid sluggish market conditions. Following the upgrade, The Pier business class lounge has been expanded by 1,000 square metres (to 3,306 square metres)
Virgin Australia’s ATR 72-500/600 turboprop fleet of 14 aircraft will carry a protective exterior coating from Permagard Australia. The work to clean, prepare and apply the clear polymer seal to the aircraft exterior takes two days per frame and is being conducted at Virgin’s Brisbane engineering facility, Permagard said in a statement. The contract to work
Qantas has boosted its frequent flyer offering for travellers to North America with an expanded partnership with Canadian airline Westjet. Under the new arrangement, announced on Wednesday, members of Qantas’s frequent flyer program can earn points when travelling on any Westjet flight from May 25 onwards. Members of the Qantas program can also redeem points
Night operations at Queenstown Airport have commenced with the arrival of Air New Zealand flight NZ613 from Auckland. The flight, operated by Airbus A320 ZK-OXI, touched down a little after 1920 local time on Monday, after a one hour and 46 minute journey from Auckland. The aircraft was on the ground for about 90 minutes
