Latest / Best of Business / Nikki Dines: Air New Zealand Chief People Officer on the planned cabin crew strike to take place in February

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Nikki Dines: Air New Zealand Chief People Officer on the planned cabin crew strike to take place in February · Best of Business

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  Speaker 2: Now, do you remember the strike by Air New Zealand
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  Speaker 2: cabin crew that was all set to ruin Christmas until
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  Speaker 2: it was called off? The strike is back. A union
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  Speaker 2: representing Cabin Cruise's international Cabin Cruise will strike on flights
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  Speaker 2: internationally obviously between eleven and thirteen February. Nicky Dines is
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  Speaker 2: Air New Zealand's chief people officer and with US now
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  Speaker 2: Hi Niki, Hi, Henna. Do you know yet which flights
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  Speaker 2: are going to be affected to which destinations?
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  Speaker 3: Yes, so our team was working through that at this stage.
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  Speaker 3: We're obviously hoping to avoid the strike by continuing discussions,
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  Speaker 3: but it will be impacts to the flights across each
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  Speaker 3: of those three days.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, in what proportion of flights? Is it a huge
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  Speaker 2: number or a small number.
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  Speaker 3: If the strike does proceed as planned, it would be
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  Speaker 3: all of the flights impacted on those days, but we're
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  Speaker 3: obviously work to find options for customers either side of
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  Speaker 3: those days.
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  Speaker 2: Now, the unions is part of the reason that the
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  Speaker 2: cabin crew are striking is because they are constantly dealing
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  Speaker 2: with customers complaining about things that in New Zealand could
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  Speaker 2: actually fix, things like canceled flight seats that don't work,
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  Speaker 2: lack of catering. Are they wrong?
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  Speaker 3: Our calculation rates have actually are back to pre COVID levels.
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  Speaker 3: What we see, it's hard for us to do much
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  Speaker 3: about weather, so we've been focusing on recovering really quickly
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  Speaker 3: and well in those events of those cancelations. In terms
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  Speaker 3: of things on board the aircraft, there are times when
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  Speaker 3: we do have issues on our aircraft, but that's really
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  Speaker 3: the exception, not the norm, and that's born out really
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  Speaker 3: in our customer stifaction rates, which are about over ninety percent.
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  Speaker 3: We're halfway through refreshing all of our cabins on our
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  Speaker 3: wide body fleets, so you do have a few teething issues,
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  Speaker 3: but those are getting worked through very quickly and resolved.
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  Speaker 2: Right, So what's going to fix it, Nikki? Do you
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  Speaker 2: reckon just paying them more?
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  Speaker 3: Well? The gap between us we've been here for ten
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  Speaker 3: months and we've been engaging every week and we've got
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  Speaker 3: through a huge amount and there's a lot of things
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  Speaker 3: that we've agreed on. The last remaining item is just
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  Speaker 3: on pay, So that's the one item that we are
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  Speaker 3: continuing to work with our keepin Crewe unions on.
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  Speaker 2: All right, good luck with it, Niki. Thanks very much,
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  Speaker 2: Nicky dines in New Zealand, Chief People Officer.
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