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Speaker 1: So after all of the hand ringing, the complaints, the

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Speaker 1: stomping of feet, the Comcom's shooting down, talk of a

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Speaker 1: probe and to domestic airfares, Foreign and Co Will of

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Speaker 1: course see this as a vindication, a validation that despite

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Speaker 1: the headlines and consumer and z's, the market has broken claim.

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Speaker 1: In fact, the reality is their costs have gone up,

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Speaker 1: and surprise, surprise, it's expensive to run routes with high

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Speaker 1: fixed costs to small places with more sheep than people.

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Speaker 1: So they conclude doing a market study, which is easy politics.

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Speaker 1: It scratches the itch, won't actually achieve anything, and by

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Speaker 1: that they mean it won't lead to consumers getting a

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Speaker 1: better deal. Refreshing honesty. Could the same refreshing honesty have

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Speaker 1: been applied to the claims about banking and supermarkets and

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Speaker 1: petrol stations, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The list

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Speaker 1: goes on, Like most things post COVID, costs have gone up,

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Speaker 1: airport landing charges up, air traffic control up, security levees up.

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Speaker 1: And when you're in business and you own we own

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Speaker 1: this one, remember fifty one percent of it. You recoup

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Speaker 1: those costs by putting your own prices up. We don't

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Speaker 1: want them subsidizing flights and crashing our business, right, the

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Speaker 1: business we own. We sold off the National carrier in

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Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine. We renationalized in two thousand and one

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Speaker 1: after Anset went bus that cost us close to a

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Speaker 1: billion bucks. Ansets problem was high costs and regulation changes

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Speaker 1: when airlines failure gets expensive for tax payers. Now, I

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Speaker 1: don't want to defend an airline charging me four hundred

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Speaker 1: dollars to fly for forty minutes any more than the

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Speaker 1: next guy. But and this is the crux of most

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Speaker 1: of the complaints we hear through the media. Short flights,

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Speaker 1: regional flights are expensive to run, and people don't use

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Speaker 1: them often enough. They use more fuel as a proportion

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Speaker 1: of a total flight because of the takeoff and the climb.

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Speaker 1: Takes a bit of gas to lift us into the sky,

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Speaker 1: especially now we're getting so fat. The cost of fuel

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Speaker 1: is a third of the operating costs for Air New Zealand,

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Speaker 1: something foreign can't control. That's more the purview of a

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Speaker 1: Poutin or a Sultan. Planes spend way too long sitting

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Speaker 1: on the ground. Your costs are higher, and you've got

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Speaker 1: fewer passengers to spread those costs over on the smaller

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Speaker 1: routes using jets, of course, that would be more efficient,

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Speaker 1: but again we don't have the people to fill them,

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Speaker 1: which is why I said the other day and it's true,

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Speaker 1: but doesn't make it palatable. We're a small country. We

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Speaker 1: pay a price for sparsely populated, beautiful, untouched landscapes. The

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Speaker 1: ComCom does say there's room for improvement, but on the

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Speaker 1: whole the real enemy here is the politician or the

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Speaker 1: talking head who tells us by simply bashing Air New

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Speaker 1: Zealand's head into the wall, they can make Kiwis fly

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Speaker 1: on the cheap. For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge,

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Speaker 1: listen live to News Talk Set B from five am weekdays,

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Speaker 1: or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.