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Air NZ accuses Origin of abandoning customers
Air New Zealand has accused Origin Pacific of “abandoning” its stranded passengers and misleading them by telling them that the national carrier would honour their travel arrangements.
The regional airline collapsed last night after it failed in its bid to find an investor to make an urgent multi-million dollar injection of capital.
Origin Pacific managing director Robert Inglis said talks had been held with Air New Zealand on Wednesday evening.
He believed an arrangement acceptable to both parties had been reached on the rescue of stranded passengers.
However, he had since been told that deal was off.
Air New Zealand chief financial officer Rob McDonald said this morning it was “extremely concerned that Origin has abandoned its customers in such a cavalier manner” and was continuing to tell its customers arrangements had been made for them to travel on Air New Zealand.
“Based on the information that Origin Pacific has released to the market, it is operating as a solvent business that is capable of paying its bills,” he said.
“However, it seems to have unilaterally decided it can abandon its thousands of customers despite having accepted payment of in excess of $1 million for their fares.”
Air New Zealand wanted to establish what had happened to the money passengers had paid for their fares before any decision would be made on re-accommodating them, Mr McDonald said.
An Origin spokesperson said, “We no longer have a passenger services company. Our call centre staff lost their jobs last night.”
He said there was a “handful of management staff trying to do their best” but they just could not deal with hundreds of passengers and was advising them to call alternative carriers.
Graham Muldoon
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