US$110 a barrel<\/a> shortly after trading resumed on Monday at 11am NZT.<\/p>\nAir Chathams chief executive Duane Emeny told Checkpoint that prices were certainly on their way up.<\/p>\n
Emeny said fuel was the company’s third most expensive cost, behind people and maintenance, and it’s causing significant cost increases for the airline.<\/p>\n
“Every time the fuel costs go up by 10 cents, for a small airline like Air Chathams, that’s about $300k on to the bottom line for us. As you can imagine, with an increase of about $60 a barrel to what we are seeing at the moment, which is around the $115 mark, you are looking at annual costs of about 1.65 million increase, or $140k a month,” he said.<\/p>\n
“So, it’s really, really significant, especially for a small airline.”<\/p>\n
Emeny said the airline may have to cut the number of flights should the price of jet fuel remain so high.<\/p>\n
“If you can’t afford to put aeroplanes in the air, then you’ve got to look at that and say ‘do I cut back my schedule, do I provide less connectivity because of this cost and then wait until it comes right and eases?’.”<\/p>\n
“… All airlines will be looking at this, the big ones and the little ones,” Emeny said.<\/p>\n
He’d like the government to look at ways to soften the blow on airlines.<\/p>\n
“It’s an uncontrollable. We just have to grin and bear it,” Emeny said.<\/p>\n
“I would just say, if there is any opportunity for the government to look at some of the mechanisms they do control – [Civil Aviation Authority] CAA levies, cost of airways, those sort of things – maybe there’s some short-term measures we can look at to support airlines.”<\/p>\n
He said pausing those levies would be a welcome relief, saving the airline around $200,000 a month.<\/p>\n
Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Duane Emeny, chief operating officer of Air Chathams. Photo: Sharon Brettkelly Airlines may have to cut the number…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":320229,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48,47,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45],"class_list":{"0":"post-320228","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-podcasts","15":"tag-public-radio","16":"tag-radio-new-zealand","17":"tag-rnz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320228\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/320229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Duane](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/4K6SYX3_Duane_Emeny_chief_operating_officer_of_Air_Chathams_jpg.jpeg\")
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