Alex Marren is used to being in the eye of the storm.

She’s Air New Zealand’s chief operating officer and this weekend the airline will be stretched with full flights and limited margin for
disruption.

Passenger numbers are up 77 per cent on this time last year and Marren is fronting the airline’s plea for patience as full flights mean long queues, delays and growing piles of lost bags.

The job of rebuilding an airline during a pandemic to meet surging demand is a new and particularly gnarly problem. Demand is running at or above pre-Covid levels but resources aren’t. Marren, who started work at Air New Zealand in April as travel started to take off, has been at the centre of the worst crises in aviation.

She takes the same approach to getting planes flying around New Zealand on a busy summer day to what she did in the crisis centre of United Airlines during the 9/11 terror attacks, then at the heart of the resulting sudden collapse in US airlines, and as boss of an airline servicing company when Covid-19 first hit and the financial impact was broader and deeper.

For Marren it’s about applying a calm, methodical approach based on decades of working in every corner of the airline industry. She’s also got a drive to keep learning.

And, importantly for any airline staffer, she’s never lost that romantic attraction to the wonder of flight.

She vividly recalls first feeling that as a girl going to her…