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4:25 pm, September 1st, 2026 - 20 comments
Categories: Christopher Luxon, the praiseworthy and the pitiful, uncategorized -
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Christopher Luxon recently chose to put the boot into Air New Zealand after it had announced an after tax loss of $242 million in the past financial year.
From John Weekes at the Herald:
[Luxon] said it was a “pretty poor performance” and added: “It’s really up for them to explain what’s caused such a significant loss and also, more importantly, what are they going to do to build a better business?”
…
“They’re a company that stands alone. We expect them to be commercial, we expect them to deal with their issues and to solve their challenges.
“It’s clearly a very poor result. It’s clearly a very poor performance, even in the context of global aviation and other airlines as well.”
Rob Fyfe, who was Luxon’s predecessor as Air New Zealand Chief, said that Luxon’s comments were not cool.
He said this:
I don’t think it’s so cool as an ex-CEO to be commenting on the current CEO or his team … If I’m brutally honest, I suspect the engines that have been causing Air New Zealand so much grief are engines that … either it was Christopher or me that made the decision to buy them. I’d be the last one to be throwing any stones.”
Fyfe was onto something here.
Air New Zealand’s latest report states that “[t]he multi-year engine issues with the Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines on our Boeing 787 fleet and Pratt & Whitney PW1100 engines on our narrowbody fleet contributed an estimated $190 million to the loss before taxation.”
This is a big chunk of Air New Zealand’s loss.
The background is that in 2014 Air New Zealand started to acquire Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines for its Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner airplanes. The engines developed problems from 2017 and caused severe disruption to Air New Zealand’s operations. Qantas chose General Electric GEnx-1B engines and did not suffer similar problems. Its latest result was a reasonably healthy profit.
Guess who was the Chief Executive of Air New Zealand at the time the decision to go with the Rolls Royce Engines?
It was none other than Christopher Luxon, old seven houses himself. He was Chief Executive from 2012 to 2019 and was Chief not only at the time the ill fated decision to go with the engines was made but also in dealing with the consequences after problems arose.
Normally I would not think this to be relevant but it appears to me that Luxon is the person best placed to explain what’s caused such a significant loss and what he did to build a better business. And he should wear his beliggerent punching down on Air New Zealand.
If he is looking for someone to blame the buck stops with him.
No what I will say is that my decision to go with those engines had no bearing on Air New Zealands bad performance.
It was largely because of the bottomed-out economy, and the government not helping out with jet fuel price increases. Oh s#!+, that’s still my fault
In that case, I’m calling the entire senior management team from air New Zealand to Wellington, to pay homage to me. Hail Caesar!!!
Engine problems!!!!? I'm surprised anyone's fly air nz at all
Problems started under his watch supposedly ??
67 days and counting down….down …down….down…..down……
Very nice – a white man's Buddy Guy, although Wikipedia doesn't cite Buddy Guy as one of Bonamassa's influences. I can see my late father saying, as he did about Jimi Hendrix, "that's not music – anyone could play that crap".
Would be nice to think of this lot gone down, down, down. Today, especially, when we've had Luxon dissing the guy who has his old job at the airline, then the truth coming out that the faulty engines were bought under his watch, and started to fail under his watch, too, and nothing was done about it.
The Louise Upstart refusing to apologise to yet another set of people whose lives – and those of their families – have been impacted by her selfish government's autocratic ideology, because she already apologised to the pensioners. Kind of seems like her apology to the pensioners was just a process, not well-meant. Apologising for wrecking people's lives isn't some kind of 10 lines' punishment for talking in class, that you can negotiate when you've done enough.
And, earlier this week, a homeless man dying of cold outside Goldsmith's electorate office, and so little made of it that one wonders if Goldsmith paid it any mind at all, perhaps only that the guy was making the place look untidy.
I know Luxon wants to be remembered for something, and I can think of nothing better than him being the Leader of the first National government to serve one term only.
But, at this stage, we can only get there if we leave our dreams on the shelf and get stuck in to help in the best ways we can. It's not over until the Fat-heads sing!!
Not my fault !!!
Freddie King did it better. Ride the trains, take your licks.
Yes but Auckland Transport grabbed that one…
Guess who swapped a perfectly good fleet of proven, tested ATR-72-500 aircraft for near identical brand new ATR-72-600 with new barely tested engines?
The whole brand new ATR-72-600 fleet has been grounded for engine repairs. Likewise a near new fleet of Airbus A320 jets were swapped for brand new A321 NEO jets powered by novel, barely tested PW1100G geared turbofan engines. this whole new fleet needed engine repairs.
Luxon had zero aviation experience, or he would have integrated new aircraft slowly.
This man is a fool with no foresight.
Luxon is a Walking/Talking Disaster Area.
I doubt Air NZ would ever ask him to come back and work for them after the Huge Mess he left the airline in when he left Air NZ.
But he will probably by now have dropped the "I used to run an airline you know?" response to questions.
It does appear he in his Incompetence is totally Incapable of Admitting he has made some bloody huge doozies in the Mistakes Field.
He is most likely now trying to find someone else to blame and throw under the bus.
He couldn't run an airline – except into the ground – and he has turned out to be damned useless running a country even though he is doing the same thing to NZ as he did to Air NZ i.e Run It Into the Ground.
Overall National are Experts at Blaming Others but will never stare in the Mirror of their Lives and LIES and admit they should take responsibility and accountability for their Botch-Ups and Mis-management.
If he is looking after himself, and, of course he is, being a right-whinger, he'll be lining up cushy positions, preferably in the USA, for the period immediately after the election, when he'll suddenly decide he 'needs to spend more time with his family.'
Perhaps ICE will get him if he goes back to the USA
I suspect that his reputation as CEO of NZ will make him unhireable
Only in NZ could you have a Bank Teller running the Health Department and a lady with an Arts Degree being Minister of Finance we really are a Banana Republic.
However we have a very successful Airline CEO running the Country, by his own admission.
This should really be the last straw. Perhaps the party should have a rethink about the decision they made about a week ago to keep him on as leader.
Luxon's other massive cock up at Air NZ involved our permanent landing rights at Heathrow, one of the busiest airports in the world. Prior to Luxon's appointment, Air NZ staff worked for years to get Air NZ permanent, secure landing rights at Heathrow & finally succeeded. Air NZ could then advertise 'Auckland to Heathrow, direct'.
Once Luxon was appointed, United Airlines persuaded him to swap Air NZ's Heathrow landing rights for landing rights at provincial Newark airport, New Jersey. Newark was still a bus ride away from New York city.
Today, Air NZ has landing rights at JFK airport, New York, but we'll never get Heathrow back. Without that fool Luxon, we could have had both.
Takes quite some skill to take a near near-monopoly airline competing with a weak state highway network and no functioning national passenger rail, and still make hundreds of millions in the red.
But still agree: Luxon has put New Zealand debt higher and higher, public services are worse, state income is miserable.
Luxon as "CEO" of the country might want to look in the mirror for a bit before having a crack..
Luxon presides over a bunch of nerds (us) and we have noticed as NZ Geographic has explained, that the costs of sending their very important missive (not missile) VIM by post to subscribers has gone up 500% since Covid. What's to worry about. Just frown Big Daddy will and question why, and not bother what the answer is. That's SEP.
As I said recently we are wading in political poo, and that's worldwise. And that brought to mind something from tv's IT Crowd (or similar name). In one of their idle moments they took a poll on how people preferred to shape their toilet paper when they wiped their bottoms. Did they fold it twice, three times, or did they squeeze it into a puff?
Well we will be in a similar poll in November. I prefer folded three times myself. More efficient and effective. But is there anyone or two in the crowded political realm who thinks widely – bidets might be the thing if we are to have a paperless society run on dissociated tech. Of course bidets do need water and on the other hand or three, we are adopting data centres as the Next Big Thing. But we have shut down Kawerau and Kaitaia wood and paper mills. Do we even know any more how to be practical, grounded?
Perhaps we will get space bots to do our functions. Or perhaps we will choose not to be humans any more. The wonders of science and unfettered egos may be taking us away from the boring past, to…where, and will we like it when we get there, we might ask, but of whom?
I think the efficient death of people who a coterie of Germans decided they didn't like, when they killed the gypsies and Jews in an 'efficient' manner, starting in the 1930s was an imperative and indelible lesson, that our egos rose above ever higher into space. There is an evil genie apparently within our natures which enabled us to survive as the last of our genus from hominoids, over 40,000 years ago. Now we are left with Ron Moody singing 'I think I'd better think it out again' on behalf of Homo sapiens. (The subtitles announce him as 'wrong Moody – a delicious Freudian slip which itself shows how widely we have thought while still not internalising the meanings.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnmuVUN-PmA
When National build these new AI Centres we will be sorted.
Was that sorted or snorted? Can't see clearly these days.