The flip side of Air New Zealand

(First published in The Dominion Post, January 20.)

There’s something slightly creepy about Air New Zealand.

Our national carrier plays very successfully on its image as an airline that does things a bit differently from others. It’s the plucky little airline that could.

We’re supposed to see Air New Zealand as quirky – a bit “out there”. Its “brand” is encapsulated in those famous safety videos, which are cited as evidence of Air New Zealand’s sense of fun, and in its habit of changing its livery to cash in on whatever’s trending, whether it’s the Rugby World Cup or The Lord of the Rings.

Myself, I can’t stand those smug, gimmicky videos, but we’re expected to love them. It’s almost a requirement of citizenship. Air New Zealand has so carefully aligned itself with Brand New Zealand that it’s unpatriotic not to think it’s the coolest little airline on the planet.

But the flip side of the airline’s corporate persona is that it can be bossy, authoritarian and a bit anal. It’s the schizoid, bad-tempered clown that can turn nasty if you don’t laugh at its jokes.

Property investor Sir Bob Jones and broadcaster Gary McCormick have both fallen foul of the airline for not complying with what Jones trenchantly calls its infantile nanny-statism. Both were banished to the naughty corner.

Jones ended up buying his own plane. McCormick has been banned for two years, an extraordinary act of arrogant corporate bullying that he intends to challenge.

I banned myself from flying Air New Zealand if I could possibly avoid it after an experience several years ago when I was booked on an afternoon flight to Sydney. I had to catch a bus to Canberra and made sure I had hours to spare, because experience had taught me to expect delays.

So it turned out. As the afternoon wore on, I sat through countless announcements of delayed departure times. I can’t recall precisely what reason was given: “servicing requirements” or “engineering requirements” or one of those familiar bland excuses that airlines use to cover up their slackness. 

At one stage we were grudgingly given vouchers for the airport café, the value of which seemed to have been fixed so as to ensure we couldn’t actually buy anything edible.  Otherwise the airline’s ground staff were characteristically missing in action.

In the event, our flight arrived in Sydney several hours late. I missed the last bus by minutes and had to make hurried arrangements to spend the night in Sydney, at considerable inconvenience both to me and the people who were expecting me in Canberra.

But what lingers in my mind was what happened when it became obvious, halfway across the Tasman, that I was at risk of missing my connection.

I approached three flight attendants who were idly chatting at the front of the cabin. I wanted to ask if they happened to know where the bus pickup point was at Sydney Airport – a piece of information that might save me vital minutes – or, failing that, whether they could suggest any other way of getting to Canberra at that late hour.

As they saw me approach, their conversation ceased and their demeanour changed. They looked at me with a mixture of alarm and suspicion. A passenger, doubtless wanting something ... a problem, in other words.

When the most senior of the attendants opened her mouth to speak to me, it wasn’t to ask how she could help. It was to reprimand me, in headmistressy tones, for stepping across a line on the floor of the cabin beyond which passengers weren’t permitted. It seems I could have been a hijacker trying to get into the cockpit.

She had all the charm of an SS concentration camp guard. Needless to say I hadn’t noticed the line on the floor (who would?) and had no idea I had suddenly become a security risk. No matter. Rules are rules, and I had to be put in my place.

It was one of those moments when you’re so taken aback that you don’t think of an appropriately witty response until much later. (The French have a term for this: l’esprit d’escalier.) But I proceeded to seek the flight attendants’ advice anyway.

They not only couldn’t help me, but showed no interest in doing so. In fact they reacted as if it was downright impertinent of me to interrupt their chatter, although it was their airline that had caused my predicament.

Such things stick in your mind for years.  It became my defining Air New Zealand moment, even superseding the memorable time my luggage – and that of most other passengers – was removed from an Air New Zealand flight to Tonga without our knowledge because the plane was overweight. The pilot casually informed us of this only when we were halfway to our destination.

Everyone has their negative airline stories, but almost all of mine involve Air New Zealand.  It's an airline that does a lot of things well, but it often appears unwilling to accept responsibility for the inconvenience it creates for passengers when it fouls things up.

That’s how McCormick fell out with the airline. He had been stuffed around by flight delays and decided that the least Air New Zealand could do was allow him a glass of wine in the Koru Club as a quid pro quo, even though he wasn’t a member. 

I understand his exasperation, but that's not the way things work with Air New Zealand. It determines the rules, and unfortunately they don't include anything about getting passengers to their destinations on time or recompensing them if it fails to do so.

In Jones’ case, the circumstances were different.  His argument with the airline arose from a flight attendant’s by-the-rulebook insistence that he read the instructions for passengers travelling in the emergency row, though he says he’d flown in the same seat countless times before.

Reading Jones’ description of the hatchet-faced flight attendant who marched off to report him to the captain, I couldn’t help wondering whether it was the same woman I’d encountered on my flight to Sydney. Certainly it sounded as if she had the same schoolmarm-ish demeanour.

Now here’s the thing. People will say that aviation safety requires that instructions be obeyed. But Air New Zealand’s preoccupation with enforcing the rules, and punishing rebellious souls like McCormick and Jones, would be more tolerable if it were matched by concern for passengers whose travel is disrupted by the airline’s own failings. But it isn’t.

The airline insists on passengers complying with instructions, but often fails to fulfil its reciprocal obligations toward them. You're at their mercy.

It’s a lop-sided relationship in which one party expects passengers to meekly do as they’re told, but doesn’t always keep its side of the bargain – and incurs no penalty for failing to do so. There’s no naughty corner for unaccountable, anonymous airline employees when planes run late or are cancelled.

I know of other regular fliers who avoid Air New Zealand if they possibly can, although it’s not easy in a country where one airline enjoys such overwhelming dominance. If Jones and McCormick want to form a club, I’m sure there’d be plenty of starters.

Gary McCormick on Hello Sailor

After the Dominion Post and Christchurch Press published my column on Graham Brazier and Hello Sailor, broadcaster Gary McCormick contacted me. Gary knew the guys from Hello Sailor well and wanted to explain the band’s appeal. He submitted a letter to both papers but neither published it, so I’m happy to post it here.

Karl du Fresne, in his column about the amount of media attention given to the funeral of Hello Sailor’s Graham Brazier and prior to that, of Dave McArtney two years ago, raises some very good questions.

Why the media attention for the deaths of members of a rock band which Dave McArtney himself said failed at the critical moments?

They did not have the success that Dragon had in Australia and their trip to the US was a disaster. So why the outpouring of grief at both funerals at St Mathew’s Church and the substantial media interest?

Karl refers to the drug use which was big among New Zealand musicians at the time and asked, “What’s admirable about alcohol or drug addiction that wrecks people’s lives?”

Good question.

Hello Sailor’ s Gutter Black, written by Dave McArtney, was an anthem of defiance which struck a pose against the background of the rigid, conformist  New Zealand of the Muldoon years.

Blue Lady and I’m a Texan reinforced an exhilarating sense (to the rest of us living in small town New Zealand) that here was a band ….  that didn’t care ! From their boots to their loud Pacifica shirts, they were the spirit of summer.  They represented danger, Ponsonby-by-Night (at a time when any young person who had the opportunity would have lived there) and they were loved by women in the best rock band tradition.

Dragon and a few other bands had the same mana, but Hello Sailor seemed to be around more often and were more accessible to party-goers from Whangarei to Invercargill.

So, to answer Karl du Fresne’s question: Hello Sailor had the songs for Kiwi rockers that beautifully represented a time and a spirit . They personified and wrote about a  Ponsonby, Gisborne,  New Plymouth, Timaru and Invercargill  Kiwi-style “Summer of Love”!

The second reason for the public outpouring of grief was the individuals – Graham and Dave themselves.  Both flawed, Karl noted, as are we all.

Graham had the serious flaws – all born out of anxiety. Impossibly good-looking and in the early days, afraid to sing at all. He had an enormous talent as a songwriter – Billy Bold and Blue Lady – and a huge stage presence, but was riddled by doubt.

For someone of his vulnerability and personality type, drugs were the obvious solution (read Amy Winehouse.)

Graham’s excesses (and there were some spectacular public ones) were a part of the battle with himself. His friends completely understood that and helped time after time to clear up the collateral damage.

He had a lot of friends because if you had one relaxed funny conversation with Graham, the memory of it stays with you for a lifetime. He was a lovely, troubled guy.

Dave McArtney was Graham’s twin, in my opinion. He loved Graham and backed him. They were like two soldiers on patrol. It was a brand of loyalty and understanding that the All Blacks can only dream about!

Thus the media coverage of both “rock funerals” was not out of order. Paul Simon wrote a song in which he says “every generation throws a hero up the rock charts.”

Dave and Graham were ours.

A ruinous and oppressive ideology

(First published in the Curmudgeon column, The Dominion Post, December 7.)

I NEVER cease to be amazed by the number of intelligent people who proudly declare themselves to be socialists, as if this were a badge of honour. A recent example was Gary McCormick, a man I otherwise admire, who proclaimed his socialist leanings on Jim Mora’s radio programme.

Socialism has been disastrous wherever it has been tried. It is oppressive politically and ruinous economically. Why would anyone align themselves with such a failed ideology?

In the case of people like McCormick, it can only be because of a sentimental desire to be seen as standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the underdog. (It shouldn’t be forgotten that McCormick is a Titahi Bay boy, and therefore a product of the Labour heartland.)

Strangely, it remains unfashionable to pronounce oneself unashamedly to be a capitalist. Yet all of the world’s freest and most prosperous countries are capitalist democracies – and usually with a Christian heritage too, although it’s even less fashionable to point that out.

Unbridled capitalism is a bad thing. Even the father of capitalism, John Stuart Mill, saw the need to curb its excesses and inequalities. But history has proved that the combination of a capitalist economy and a liberal democratic state provides the best possible conditions for freedom, human rights and economic progress.

This is confirmed by the masses of people from repressive socialist states who have risked everything to migrate to the capitalist democracies of Europe and North America. They clearly recognise that capitalism works for underdogs as much as for anyone else.

* * *

SITTING down recently to watch a DVD of the award-winning Australian film Jindabyne, I was struck by a warning notice to viewers. “Members of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities are advised that this film may contain images and/or voices of deceased persons”, it said.

This seemed to open up limitless possibilities. If the makers of all films and TV programmes were to issue warnings about who might be offended, where would it end? Just about every film contains images or dialogue that might upset someone.

Roughly 90 percent of what’s screened on television is offensive to me, for a whole lot of reasons, but I don’t expect an advisory notice (“The following programme will render you brain-dead”) at the start of every show.

The question, then, is why should a specific warning be issued to Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders about the contents of Jindabyne, which revolves around the discovery of a murdered Aboriginal woman’s body in a remote river?

I don’t recall ever seeing such a “cultural” warning on a film ever before. So what makes Jindabyne different?

The implication is either that Aboriginal and Torres Strait islanders’ sensibilities are more deserving of protection than other people’s, or that these two ethnic minorities are too fragile to be exposed to the artistic freedom of expression that everyone else takes for granted.

Either way, the warning seems an example of condescending political correctness of the most cringe-worthy type.

* * *

I AM MORE convinced than ever that the people excitedly talking up the benefits of social media such as Twitter are a noisy, evangelistic minority – eager adopters of whatever is deemed the Latest Big Thing.

They deride non-adopters as technologically challenged dinosaurs. But to put this idea to the test, I questioned my own offspring and their partners – all of them in the age group that supposedly embraces Twitter, and all of them comfortable in the digital world.

There are seven of them aged between 26 and 40 and not one uses Twitter. A daughter-in-law said Twitter just seemed like a great time-waster, which was exactly my impression.

Another daughter-in-law commented: “It falls into my ‘why would anyone think up something so annoying?’ category.” And one of my daughters said that in her circle of friends, only one has a Twitter account, and then only because it’s a requirement for a media studies course she’s doing.

The social media evangelists like to give the impression that anyone who doesn’t tweet or have a Facebook page is a loser, but in fact it’s social media users who are the minority. At a presentation in Auckland recently I heard a speaker from one of the country’s leading advertising agencies, which closely monitor social trends, dismiss social media as “10 percent talking to 10 percent”. But you wouldn’t guess it from all the attention they create.

* * *

LAST Tuesday night, in prime time, four of the five free-to-air channels were screening food programmes. Is this some sort of bizarre record?

At 7.30, TV Two had My Kitchen Rules, TV3 had The Kitchen Job and Prime showed Nigella Kitchen, starring that woman with a figure like an overstuffed sofa who seems to be every ageing Englishman’s wet dream. Prime then screened River Cottage at 8.05 and TV One had Jamie’s Food Escapes at 8.30.

I like my tucker as much as the next bloke, but this is madness. The food porn fad is out of control.