Etihad Airways and Air New Zealand agree maintenance deal

Code-share partners Etihad Airways and Air New Zealand have signed a wide-ranging agreement to provide reciprocal line maintenance services in Melbourne, Australia, and Los Angeles, U.S.A..
Etihad Airways will soon perform all scheduled and non-scheduled line maintenance on Air New Zealand aircraft in Melbourne at its Tullamarine engineering facility. In return, Air New Zealand is already performing full line maintenance for Etihad Airways in Los Angeles.
The maintenance services to be performed in Melbourne and Los Angeles may include transit, daily and weekly checks, scheduled engineering services and fault repairs for the aircraft systems and passenger cabins.
Jeff Wilkinson, Etihad Airways Senior Vice President, Technical, said, "Our successful code-share partnership with Air New Zealand goes back three years and we are delighted to build on this foundation by working together in the technical area.
"Etihad Airways Melbourne line maintenance facilities, services and personnel are world-class, and we look forward to servicing Air New Zealand s aircraft while they perform similar line maintenance for us at their modern facility in Los Angeles.
"We also expect this announcement to lead to further employment opportunities at our Melbourne line maintenance facility in the future." Air New Zealand Chief Operations Officer, Bruce Parton, said, "We look forward to working with Etihad Airways both as a customer and service provider. Our Los Angeles maintenance team currently provides services to several airlines and we are excited to add Etihad Airways to the list." In addition to Melbourne and Sydney, Etihad Airways existing line maintenance facilities are in Chicago, Dublin, Mumbai, Lahore, London-Heathrow, Manchester and Singapore.