Air New Zealand boss Rob Fyfe says "malicious rumours" are being spread from Australia that his airline has grounded ash-damaged aircraft and was dangerously continuing to fly around ash drifting from Chile's erupting volcano.
It was business as usual for Air New Zealand today, though Qantas and Jetstar flights were still affected by the ash cloud, and Mr Fyfe took a swipe at Qantas.
An email from Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce to the airline's eight million frequent flyer customers, justifying the grounding of many of its aircraft, implied airlines such as Air New Zealand and Virgin Australia were operating unsafely, Mr Fyfe said.
"What Alan omitted to mention was that it wasn't just Air New Zealand and Virgin Australia that had managed to adapt their operations to operate safely in clear air, but all airlines apart from Qantas and Jetstar had managed to achieve the vast majority of their operations.
"What Alan also failed to mention was that Qantas was very happy to transfer thousands of its customers on to Air New Zealand and other airlines' services, which seems a strange thing to do for your customers if you have concerns about the safety of the airspace."
Qantas advised all flights to New Zealand had been suspended today, services to Tasmania were also affected, while other services operated as normal.
Jetstar said all flights in and out of New Zealand and Tasmania and had been cancelled until at least midday (NZT).
Virgin Australia cancelled flights in and out of Tasmania until this afternoon, while flights in and out of New Zealand would continue to be suspended for the day.
Air New Zealand has continued to fly -- accepting the cost of burning more fuel flying lower, below and around the ash cloud.
Mr Fyfe said that behind the scenes Air NZ was "constantly battling a series of malicious rumours that emerged from the Australian market and fed to media".
Those rumours suggested Air NZ had six ash-damaged aircraft in the hangar, an aircraft grounded in Australia with ash damage, and another requiring a nose cone replacement as a result of ash damage, he said.
"All these stories were a complete fiction and I was left scratching my head as to where these false rumours were coming from."
Mr Fyfe said that as Mt Puyehue Cordon Caulle continued to erupt, ash clouds would continue to drift across the region possibly for weeks or months to come.
"It is also likely that we will see Qantas and Jetstar come under further customer and media pressure if they continue to adopt this strategy of grounding aircraft and it is possible that we will continue to see misinformation and false rumours emerge in the market."
