Overview - Freedom Air International

Freedom Air describes itself as a value-based airline. It is one of the first Southwest-type models applied outside the US and is the longest standing LCC in the Asia Pacific region. It was also the first LCC subsidiary of a substantial legacy carrier, Air New Zealand.

Also of significance is that Freedom’s model was formulated by Ray Webster, later to achieve notoriety as the long term head of easyJet (and his eventual elevation as an Aviation Legend in the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation’s Hall of Fame!). Ray, while employed by Air New Zealand in its San Francisco office, had been impressed greatly by Southwest’s operations and was eager to add it to Air New Zealand’s repertoire.

Freedom was initially established in 1995, to fight off the intrusion by independent Kiwi Airlines into Qantas and Air New Zealand’s cosy duopoly of the Australia-New Zealand market. In that respect, Kiwi was in fact probably the first – albeit short-lived – LCC in the region. It lasted less than a year.

The brief intrusion of Kiwi showed graphically the impact of low fares in stimulating a previously staid market. Together with the competitive responses from Freedom, Air New Zealand and Qantas, traffic growth of over 25% was temporarily achieved in what was already a quite significant and apparently mature market. The undercapitalised Kiwi was overwhelmed by the combined competitive response in less than 12 months.

Freedom has remained as a largely independent Air New Zealand stalking horse to prevent repetitions of the Kiwi experience. But it also proved a very effective stimulant for traffic to and from New Zealand’s regional centres into the main East Coast Australian airports. By initially using only regional points, such as Hamilton (near Auckland), Palmerston North (a larger distance from the capital Wellington) and Dunedin in the South Island, Freedom also illustrated how low fares could stimulate whole new catchment areas. This route strategy also avoided direct competition with its parent on the major city pairs. The airline’s bases are in these three cities, with a main base and headquarters in Auckland.

For a short time Freedom operated domestically in New Zealand, but was replaced by a reinvigorated parent, as Air New Zealand evolved into one of the lowest cost legacy airlines. Freedom commenced international service to holiday destination Fiji in 2005.

Freedom remains a thoroughly lean airline, separate in most respects from Air New Zealand, with no inflight meals, entertainment, lounges or mileage points.

It commenced service with a single B737-300 and slowly grew to five of that type before Air New Zealand converted to A320s; Freedom now leases aircraft and crews from Zeal320, its parent’s operating company.

The New Zealand airline has no connection with the Guam-based airline of the same name.

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