Latest / Best of Business / Carrie Hurihanganui: Auckland Airport CEO on profits dropping slightly, expectations of strong growth in summer

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Carrie Hurihanganui: Auckland Airport CEO on profits dropping slightly, expectations of strong growth in summer · Best of Business

• 0:09
  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from News Talks B Follow
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: this and our wide range of podcasts now on iHeartRadio.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Airport News. We already told you this week christ Utism
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  Speaker 2: for a record summer in terms of capacity. Meantime, Auckland
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  Speaker 2: Airport's or revenue grow to top a billion dollars, profit
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  Speaker 2: down a little bit. Carry who to hang Ahui is
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  Speaker 2: the chief executive and she's back with us. Morning to
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  Speaker 2: you carry Good morning mate, you're happy, I am.
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  Speaker 3: I think it was a solid result when you look
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  Speaker 3: at the backdrop.
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  Speaker 2: The capacity issues that you faced during the war, the
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  Speaker 2: fuel price issues and stuff. Is that now settled down
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  Speaker 2: or we're still in a state of some flux.
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  Speaker 3: Still some flux what you tend to see a number
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  Speaker 3: of airlines have made capacity reductions through to what we
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  Speaker 3: call the northern winter or peak season, so through to
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  Speaker 3: kind of end October, so those are largely baked in.
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  Speaker 3: But we're certainly seeing strong international growth over summer. We're
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  Speaker 3: looking to have six million international seats in it out
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  Speaker 3: of the airport of the summer peak. That'll be up
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  Speaker 3: four percent on last summer.
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  Speaker 2: Which is positive encouraging. Is Christ you're eating your lunch
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  Speaker 2: or starting to.
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  Speaker 3: I think there's dynamics when you look across long haul
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  Speaker 3: short haul. You know, domestic from my perspective, first and
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  Speaker 3: foremost is a key we and the ink growing is
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  Speaker 3: a great news. Clearly we'd love to continue to grow
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  Speaker 3: at Ackland and we are seeing that international space. Domestically
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  Speaker 3: it is a little bit flat. So I know air
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  Speaker 3: ni zeand now has their fleet back, They've indicated so
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  Speaker 3: I think, and I know Nichols working pretty hard to
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  Speaker 3: get those things up and running again. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Regionally, what's your involvement with regional New Zealand and regional
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  Speaker 2: flights and the issues that are in New Zealand have had.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, so a regional has been doing it tough and
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  Speaker 3: was doing it tough before the Middle East conflict and
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  Speaker 3: obviously fuel price volatility. So we are we certainly engage
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  Speaker 3: in understand because around sixty percent of regional flights touched
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  Speaker 3: Okland at some point, whether it's two from or through.
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  Speaker 3: One of the things we did do in here when
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  Speaker 3: that initial fuel crisis commenced, we did offer regional airlines
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  Speaker 3: some support in terms of rental abatements for kind of
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  Speaker 3: timely and targeted period just to help them I guess
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  Speaker 3: deal with that initial crisis and they had a lot
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  Speaker 3: on their plate.
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  Speaker 2: So you talked well of summer, So summer looks good.
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  Speaker 2: That's encouraging. Twenty seven.
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  Speaker 3: Twenty seven. We're really optimistic, Michael, if a look probably
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  Speaker 3: a game of two halves, if I want to use
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  Speaker 3: that phrase, international very strong. We'll be back to over
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  Speaker 3: ninety five percent recovery in the summer peak at Auckland,
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  Speaker 3: which we're tantalizingly close to getting back to being fully recovered.
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  Speaker 3: And destination New Zealand is still really appealing to airlines.
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  Speaker 3: So whilst you've got the fuel volatility, the intentions and timing,
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  Speaker 3: we're certainly hearing and seeing that they're intending to grow fantastic.
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  Speaker 2: Always a pleasure, Go well, Kerrie who to hung An
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  Speaker 2: Auckland Airport this morning.
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