Air New Zealand CEO: Economy Bunk Beds Are Not a Vanity Project

The CEO of Air New Zealand has pushed back on suggestions that the airline's headline-grabbing premium products are difficult to justify at a time of mounting losses and cost cuts.

"These projects for us, they're not vanity projects, they're existential," Nikhil Ravishankar told Skift on the sidelines of the IATA Annual General Meeting in Rio de Janeiro.

The comments came as the carrier prepares to launch Skynest, its much-publicized economy bunk-bed product that will allow passengers on ultra-long-haul flights to book one of six lie-flat sleeping pods for a four-hour period.

In a project update, Ravishankar confirmed the Skynest timeline has slipped slightly, but it’s still due to be in the air by the end of the year. Skynest now expected to debut "around the mid-December t