It’s Wednesday, and the busiest airport in the country has a date circled on its calendar. Four items.
Auckland Airport’s emergency services team will strike twice in the last week of November, and the airport says flights cannot run without them
E tū has served strike notice on behalf of all 69 members of Auckland Airport’s Airport Emergency Services team. They plan to stop work for 24 hours from 6am on Tuesday 24 November and again from 6am on Friday 27 November. The team provides aviation rescue and firefighting, marine response on the Manukau Harbour and medical care across the airport, and an airport must have that cover on duty for aircraft to operate. Chief operations officer Chloe Surridge said that if the strikes go ahead as notified, domestic and international flights may need to be cancelled or diverted, affecting tens of thousands of travellers along with airlines, freight and exporters. The airport is working on contingency plans and telling passengers to watch for updates from their airlines.
The dispute has two parts. The union says the job evaluation used after the last bargaining round undervalues the physical and psychological load of the role. The second is training: the airport’s own live-fire training ground has closed, so crews now fly to Singapore for five days a year to keep their Civil Aviation Authority certification, rising to two five-day trips from next year, and the union says the time away is not properly compensated. E tū points to Auckland Airport’s $309 million underlying profit and $224.9 million in dividends last year as evidence it can afford a better offer.
Both sides say they are still bargaining, and notice of this kind is often withdrawn once a deal lands. But the dates are pointed. The 24th falls in the run-up to the summer peak, and the 27th is the same day the Electoral Commission is due to release the official election result. Inbound operators with groups landing on either date should be checking arrival times now rather than the night before.
Source: NZ Herald, E tū release via Scoop
Stat of the day
69
The number of rescue and firefighting staff covered by the strike notice, which is the whole team, leaving no qualified crew for flights to operate under. (Auckland Airport, via NZ Herald)
Kāpiti Coast Airport’s owners have a conditional sale that requires them to close it first
A spokesperson for Kāpiti Coast Airport has confirmed to the Herald that the owners have a conditional sale and purchase agreement and must close the airport before the buyer takes possession. Local MP Tim Costley said on Monday he expected the owners to announce closure at the end of this month, describing the likely timetable as “that brutal and that fast”. No announcement had been reported by Wednesday morning.
The airport has been owned since 2019 by developer NZ PropCo, which has said it is not sustainable as an airport. Sounds Air is now the only scheduled operator, flying to Blenheim and Nelson, after Air Chathams pulled out in July. Land Information New Zealand says the owners have asked it to begin its work under section 40 of the Public Works Act, which requires land no longer needed for a public work to be offered back to its former owners. That matters here because the Crown admitted in 2022 that it had failed to offer the land back to Puketapu Hapū when it was sold in 1999, and the hapū has said it wants to buy it back.
The airport zoning is the real fight. Housing would need a plan change through Kāpiti Coast District Council, and Costley says he knows of an offer of about $50 million to buy the site and keep it flying. For visitors the stakes are small in numbers but real in shape: the Kāpiti Coast’s only direct air link to the top of the South Island would go, and the region would lose a paved runway that sits in civil defence plans as an emergency supply hub.
A coroner’s Abbey Caves findings are written for schools, but every weather-exposed operator should read them
Coroner Alexander Ho has released his findings into the death of Karnin Petera, 15, who drowned when floodwater surged through Abbey Caves near Whangārei on 9 May 2023, during a Whangārei Boys’ High School outdoor education trip run while an orange heavy rain warning covered Northland. Ho found several chances to cancel the trip were missed and that Karnin would not have died had it been called off. He said staff read the forecasts too optimistically, gave more weight to local forecasts and rain radar than to MetService’s warning, and were probably encouraged by a successful trip the day before. He also recommended that schools set clear, objective cancellation thresholds and name who holds the authority to cancel.
The part getting attention this week is his criticism of MetService’s hourly figures. The forecast on the Monday night showed 12.5mm of rain between 1pm and 2pm the next day; by Tuesday morning it had softened to 1 to 4mm an hour. Ho noted those numbers are computer-generated and not checked by a meteorologist, that many people misread which hour each column covers, and that the app and website disclaimers say different things. He recommended MetService make its definitions and limitations clearer. Chief meteorologist Chris Noble said watches and warnings should always take precedence over other forecast information, and that improvements were already under way.
For adventure and outdoor operators the transferable lesson is in the first paragraph, not the second. A written trigger, such as “an orange warning for the area cancels the trip”, and a named person who owns the call are cheaper than any forecast product, and they are exactly what the coroner found missing.
Auckland’s kauri dieback rate has reopened 109 tracks, with 21 still shut
A report to Auckland Council’s Community Committee shows the Natural Environment Targeted Rate, introduced in 2018 at $44 a year per ratepayer, has put $49.43 million since 2019 into track upgrades and hygiene infrastructure. Over seven years the programme upgraded 173km of track across regional and local parks, reopened 109 tracks, and installed 135 hygiene stations in parks, 12 at wharves and three vehicle wash stations. The capital works programme ended in June. Of the tracks identified for upgrade, 21 remain closed, and the council says it will keep working on them from other budgets.
The Waitākere Ranges were the heart of it. Te Kawerau ā Maki placed a rāhui on the ranges in 2017 and the council closed its forested areas in May 2018. Working in partnership with the iwi, the programme has since reopened 81km of track there. Te Kawerau Iwi Tiaki Trust chief executive Edward Ashby said the next stage includes developing Te Ara Tuhura, the Hillary Trail, as a multi-day circular walk. Getting a multi-day walk back within an hour’s drive of the country’s main international gateway would give Auckland something few gateway cities can sell, and the careful, staged way the tracks reopened is a reasonable model for any region managing access around a biosecurity risk.
Source: Local Democracy Reporting via Scoop
Coming up
- 17 November: Air Niugini’s first Port Moresby to Auckland service
- 20 November: TranzAlpine runs Christchurch to Arthur’s Pass only until this date
- 22 November: Three Singapore services in a day at Christchurch, 1,560 seats on the route
- 24 November: 24-hour strike notified by Auckland Airport’s emergency services team, from 6am
- 25 November: Stats NZ’s supplementary population tables; Havelock marina community drop-in
- 27 November: Second 24-hour Auckland Airport emergency services strike, from 6am; official general election result due from the Electoral Commission
- 28 November: Air New Zealand’s first Christchurch to Tokyo Narita service
- 30 November: Air New Zealand’s first Christchurch to Perth service
- 1 December: Paid parking starts at Cornwall Park, Auckland
- December: Reserve Bank’s next OCR decision
- 6 February 2027: Waitangi weekend deadline for user-pays at 33 Mackenzie toilet facilities
- 30 June 2027: thl’s lease on the Waitomo Glowworm Cave expires
- 1 July 2027: New Border Processing Levy rates take effect
That's today's briefing. The Shoulder Season is back every weekday morning.