Airport & Airline Operations

Our Airline Assistants are part of the Passenger Services team alongside our Customer Service Assistants. Airline Assistants meet and greet customers at check-in, assist with the bag drop, provide special assistance and manage arrivals and departures. Our Airline Assistants gain valuable experience in the operation and many go on to upskill and apply for a Customer Service Assistant role.

Our Customer Service Agents are the welcoming face of our check-in experience and manage the customer experience through to the departure gates. Customer Service Agents manage the front of house experience for our customers, assisting with check-in at our kiosks, oversize baggage, special assistance, ticket sales and baggage tracing. They also manage arrivals and departures, boarding flights and meeting customers off flights.

Our Customer Service Agents can also develop and build their skills in specialist areas such as service control, load control and the Airport Operations Centre.

Our cleaners play an important part in creating the important first impression when you get on an Air New Zealand aircraft. They are responsible for cleaning the interior of the aircraft as soon as it arrives at the gate and making sure it is presented back to our high standards in a very short timeframe so that we can have the next flight leave on time.

It is a very team orientated role, which each person being responsible for their tasks.

Cleaners can develop their skills and progress from this role to other positions, including a driver, foreman or team manager.

As a Loader, you will ensure that our customers’ bags are handled securely and arrive on time. It is a role that is physically very demanding with a lot of heavy lifting involved. With aircraft taking off and landing throughout the day you'll always be kept busy. Our Loaders work both indoors and outdoors, and with a variety of aircraft and machinery.

As you gain in your experience, you can develop more specialist skills.

Our Team Managers are responsible for supervising and managing our people within various roles across the operation. Whether you are managing front of house or back of house you would be responsible for up to 15 direct reports. Team Managers are shift workers and will be aligned to a shift with their people, managing their day to day performance, developing our frontline and operational workforce. A lot of our Team Managers are promoted from within our operational teams ensuring they have the operational knowledge, as well as required great relationships with stakeholders across the business. 

Our Lounge Hosts are the welcoming face of the Air New Zealand Lounges. Lounge Hosts are there to meet and greet customers in the lounges and assist with any needs they may have, such as disrupted flights or seat changes. 

Safety is paramount and at the heart of everything we do. We work to stringent regulations, conditions and guidelines, and we want to make sure we are going above and beyond these and have the safest operation possible. People Safety incorporates aviation and occupational health, safety and wellbeing. Our People Safety team are expert advisors who partner with stakeholders across our business to ensure the health, safety and wellbeing of our customers and our employees.

We are embedding a culture that makes safety a true shared value through focusing on mindful leadership, proactive risk management, the fostering of healthy relationships and ensuring appropriate tools and resources are available at all times.  Safe practices must be inherent in our systems, our operating procedures and most importantly in the way we think and act.  We believe health, safety and wellbeing is everyone’s responsibility and it requires a collective approach to see everyone go home safely every day.

Operations Controllers are ultimately responsible for coordinating all operational aspects in relation to disruption recovery. A large part of their role is making collaborative decisions to maintain schedule integrity while ensuring our customers reach their destinations in a timely manner.

Flight Planning is all about planning the safe operation of an aircraft from the gate at the departure airport to its arrival at the destination.

Using our mission-critical suite of systems and tools, you might be looking at weather patterns, or monitoring aircraft performance data to choose the most economical route, while taking into account all safety-related information from aviation agencies.

Load Controllers make sure the right weight and balance information is sent to the flight deck before takeoff. Information provided by Load Control is used to maximise space, the amount of payload (cargo, customers and bags) carried on a flight, rationalise the amount of fuel required and ensure the aircraft is loaded safely and is capable of operating a specific flight.

Our Navigation Services team is responsible for determining and maintaining navigation databases for our aircraft and flight planning system. These include databases loaded into an aircraft's onboard Flight Management System that provide the pilot with route information, arrival, approach and departure procedures for every airport.

Navigation Services also determine the suitability of airports for a given aircraft type and check the integrity of the satellite based approaches used by Air New Zealand. These satellite based approaches significantly enhance the reliability of services to locations such as Queenstown. 

The Operational Integrity & Safety team leads and manages the operation of a Safety Management System within Air New Zealand. The team ensures compliance with the Civil Aviation Rules (CAR) and Advisory Circulars (AC) and foreign airworthiness authority requirements. The Safety Management System assures safe air and ground operations through risk management, standards and compliance and is subject to regular safety auditing to monitor safety performance.

Standards and Training

Our Standards and Training division is responsible for designing and delivering all pilot training. They are tasked with ensuring that rigorous standards of operational excellence are achieved and maintained by every one of our pilots.

Learning is a continuous process for our pilots, as they move from one aircraft type to another and step up to more senior roles.

The Standards and Training team offers career advancement opportunities to pilots who have a passion for teaching with many taking the opportunity to pass on their knowledge and expertise to their pilot colleagues.