Bohemian Rhapsody hits the big time on Air New Zealand

We get a lot of press releases here at EFTM HQ and let me tell you, my keyboard delete button regularly cops a hammering. Today an Air New Zealand press release landed in my inbox, as I gazed at the first two lines all I saw was a couple of trigger phrases.

Apparently Air New Zealand customers in the UK are more than twice as likely to offset the carbon impact of their flights than those based both here and across the ditch.

Now I thought about this for a sold two-minutes and decided “Yeah nah, I’m brushing this one.” 

But then I read on.

Air New Zealand has in fact stumbled across some very interesting data on its customers during the course of 2019. 

The carbon stuff I’ll leave to one side, because to be honest it’s Friday and frankly I couldn’t be bothered explaining it. 

But, what about this. Air New Zealand operated more than 190,000 flights in the past year. That’s 37.4 billion kilometres and saw customers earning 101.5 million Airpoints Dollars. Someone even managed to clock-up 522,602 kilometres in the air, that’s 13 times around the planet. 

Airline food never really gets a good wrap, but someone’s eating it. A team of 2,000 chefs and culinary specialists in 24 locations knocked up 6.3 million inflight meals since 1 July 2018.

Beef won the day over chicken with 283,400 portions of New Zealand beef osso bucco with caramelised onion served. Chicken tagine came in second. Lamb did well with 1.6 million New Zealand beef and lamb dishes served.

Business Premier customers on flights NZ1 and NZ5 from Los Angeles to Auckland were the first to sink their teeth into the plant-based Impossible Burger, with 7000 patties and 4200 Impossible Burger sliders devoured. 

Other culinary achievements include 960,000 ice creams and 900,000 portions of New Zealand cheese served on international flights leaving New Zealand.

Frequent flyers also love a drink with almost 5.8 million glasses of New Zealand being served. Pinot noir came out on top beating last year’s sauvignon blanc as the preferred drop.

But if there was an Airline version of the Oscars it would go to Bohemian Rhapsody. It was viewed 162,215 times in the past year. Although The Beatles did attract 606,773 hits when it came to the airlines playlist.

This chart will give you some more insights, but there you go Air New Zealand, you got me.