So after all of the hand ringing, the complaints, the stomping of feet, the Comcom's shooting down, talk of a probe and to domestic airfares, Foreign and Co Will of course see this as a vindication, a validation that despite the headlines and consumer and z's, the market has broken claim. In fact, the reality is their costs have gone up, and surprise, surprise, it's expensive to run routes with high fixed costs to small places with more sheep than people. So they conclude doing a market study, which is easy politics. It scratches the itch, won't actually achieve anything, and by that they mean it won't lead to consumers getting a better deal. Refreshing honesty. Could the same refreshing honesty have been applied to the claims about banking and supermarkets and petrol stations, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The list goes on, Like most things post COVID, costs have gone up, airport landing charges up, air traffic control up, security levees up. And when you're in business and you own we own this one, remember fifty one percent of it. You recoup those costs by putting your own prices up. We don't want them subsidizing flights and crashing our business, right, the business we own. We sold off the National carrier in nineteen eighty nine. We renationalized in two thousand and one after Anset went bus that cost us close to a billion bucks. Ansets problem was high costs and regulation changes when airlines failure gets expensive for tax payers. Now, I don't want to defend an airline charging me four hundred dollars to fly for forty minutes any more than the next guy. But and this is the crux of most of the complaints we hear through the media. Short flights, regional flights are expensive to run, and people don't use them often enough. They use more fuel as a proportion of a total flight because of the takeoff and the climb. Takes a bit of gas to lift us into the sky, especially now we're getting so fat. The cost of fuel is a third of the operating costs for Air New Zealand, something foreign can't control. That's more the purview of a Poutin or a Sultan. Planes spend way too long sitting on the ground. Your costs are higher, and you've got fewer passengers to spread those costs over on the smaller routes using jets, of course, that would be more efficient, but again we don't have the people to fill them, which is why I said the other day and it's true, but doesn't make it palatable. We're a small country. We pay a price for sparsely populated, beautiful, untouched landscapes. The ComCom does say there's room for improvement, but on the whole the real enemy here is the politician or the talking head who tells us by simply bashing Air New Zealand's head into the wall, they can make Kiwis fly on the cheap. For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge, listen live to News Talk Set B from five am weekdays, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.

So after all of the hand ringing, the complaints, the stomping of feet, the Comcom's shooting down, talk of a probe and to domestic airfares, Foreign and Co Will of course see this as a vindication, a validation that despite the headlines and consumer and z's, the market has broken claim. In fact, the reality is their costs have gone up, and surprise, surprise, it's expensive to run routes with high fixed costs to small places with more sheep than people. So they conclude doing a market study, which is easy politics. It scratches the itch, won't actually achieve anything, and by that they mean it won't lead to consumers getting a better deal. Refreshing honesty. Could the same refreshing honesty have been applied to the claims about banking and supermarkets and petrol stations, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The list goes on, Like most things post COVID, costs have gone up, airport landing charges up, air traffic control up, security levees up. And when you're in business and you own we own this one, remember fifty one percent of it. You recoup those costs by putting your own prices up. We don't want them subsidizing flights and crashing our business, right, the business we own. We sold off the National carrier in nineteen eighty nine. We renationalized in two thousand and one after Anset went bus that cost us close to a billion bucks. Ansets problem was high costs and regulation changes when airlines failure gets expensive for tax payers. Now, I don't want to defend an airline charging me four hundred dollars to fly for forty minutes any more than the next guy. But and this is the crux of most of the complaints we hear through the media. Short flights, regional flights are expensive to run, and people don't use them often enough. They use more fuel as a proportion of a total flight because of the takeoff and the climb. Takes a bit of gas to lift us into the sky, especially now we're getting so fat. The cost of fuel is a third of the operating costs for Air New Zealand, something foreign can't control. That's more the purview of a Poutin or a Sultan. Planes spend way too long sitting on the ground. Your costs are higher, and you've got fewer passengers to spread those costs over on the smaller routes using jets, of course, that would be more efficient, but again we don't have the people to fill them, which is why I said the other day and it's true, but doesn't make it palatable. We're a small country. We pay a price for sparsely populated, beautiful, untouched landscapes. The ComCom does say there's room for improvement, but on the whole the real enemy here is the politician or the talking head who tells us by simply bashing Air New Zealand's head into the wall, they can make Kiwis fly on the cheap. For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge, listen live to News Talk Set B from five am weekdays, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.