Title : Barrier Air announces Whitianga air service
link : Barrier Air announces Whitianga air service
Barrier Air announces Whitianga air service
Continuing its development as an innovative and high-functioning regional airline Barrier Air has announced today that it will commence daily services between Auckland International and Whitianga. The service will use Barrier Air's Cessna 208 Grand Caravans with the airline in the process of purchasing a fourth Cessna Grand Caravan to cater for the new Whitianga service. The service will be able to operate IFR with the airline working to reactivate the GPS approach at Whitianga. This is first time that Whitianga has had an IFR service. A Caravan will overnight in Whitianga, leaving around 7:30am and returning from Auckland at 5:00pm in summer or 4:30pm in winter. Services will commence in mid-December 2021.
Commenting on the new service Barrier Air's Chief Executive Officer Grant Bacon told 3rd Level NZ, We are excited to be launching our new route to Whitianga later this year. We were not meant to announce it until mid-winter but it seems there is already a lot of local support for the new service and I had a phone call from the reporter at the local Whitianga newspaper ‘asking if the rumours were true?’ so we thought we may as well run with it and start promoting it now. We are looking to launch in early December in time for the peak season. With our now successful Kaitaia route I feel that Whitianga will be a lot easier than Kaitaia was. A couple of years ago when we increased our services to Kaitaia to 27 sectors per week we felt it was a big risk and would either make or break us. But at the time we made some really good relationships up in the far north with local business, the iwi and locals. We walked the streets promoting the service in Kaitaia and it actually started to work. Post-Covid it is near the record levels of summer 19/20 and we are really pleased with how Kaitaia is going. So based on this experience, Whitianga has a larger populations base, it’s a tough commute via road and people have more ties to Auckland with family and holiday homes etc and the region is very marketable which is why we have decided to give it a crack. Commissioning the GPS approach has been a good experience with Airways and the flight time is pretty quick compared with Great Barrier Island so we feel this will be a winner.
The Caravan is a very marketable product for small towns which are used to smaller aircraft. People expect a turbine engine when flying on scheduled services these days and we will be marketing the benefits of the aircraft as part of our offering. Having the IFR approach means the service will be reliable and I expect it to become a similar product and have a good reputation as we do these days in Kaitaia. Our team on the ground in Kaitaia have great relationships in the community and we will look to employ ground staff in Whitianga which will promote the service in a similar fashion. We plan to overnight the aircraft in Whitianga, which will save on Auckland Airport aircraft parking charges”
With work started on the extra laning of the Papakura-Drury South motorway likely to bring more traffic jams on Auckland motorway and with increasing road traffic on the Coromandel Peninsula the Barrier Air's new air service looks to offer a quick, reliable, all weather air connection to the Coromandel without the hassle of the variability of traffic conditions. As borders continue to open the new service also offers good connections to international flights without the expense of parking at Auckland airport.
All in all this is another exciting development in Barrier Air's evolving story.
For more information see : http://theinformer.co.nz/detail.aspx?cid=3591
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