The tiny airline ‘most loved’ in NZ
‘‘Pretty cool.’’ That was the reaction of Stewart Island Flights CEO and Chief Pilot Leon Bax when he found out his tiny airline had been named the ‘‘most loved’’ in New Zealand.
A survey from Australian foreign exchange company S Money measured the reactions of thousands of tweets from airlines, or mentions and hashtags about them, to come up with the world’s most favourite companies, as well as the not-so-well-liked. Only airlines with scheduled services were included in the poll.
The overall most loved airline was Canada’s Bearskin Airlines with more positive tweets about it than anyone else. In our part of the world, tiny Stewart Island Flights was top in New Zealand and eighth in the Asia/Pacific region. At the other end of the table, Air New Zealand found themselves bottom here in Aotearoa.
Stewart Island Flights operates around 16 daily return trips from Invercargill to Oban, and has a fleet of two Britten Norman Islanders (with another one ordered), one Piper Cherokee Six and a Cessna 185.
Having started flying in 2000, Bax said the small company which employs about 20 has gone from strength to strength.
‘‘We’re doing sort of record numbers at the moment, even just after the first lockdown, we’ve been super busy,’’ Bax told Stuff. ‘‘Kiwis were travelling within New Zealand but they’re going to bucket list destinations, and places like the normal tourist routes of Queenstown and Te Anau were struggling, and for some reason everyone wanted to go to Stewart Island and we were flat out.’’
Bax puts the company’s success down to its ability to keep everything local. ‘‘We really focus on the community down here. You know we don’t try and overextend or over capitalise on other routes and other sectors. That’s what I think we do really well.’’
Don’t expect the airline to be targetting services to any of the big centres of Auckland and Sydney anytime soon. ‘‘No plans whatsoever,’’ laughed Bax. ‘‘I think in the 10 years I’ve been down here I’ve gone north of Invercargill maybe twice in our planes, in charters to Queenstown or Milford.’’