Air New Zealand’s Valuable 500 Commitment
At Air New Zealand, we believe in creating an environment where everyone feels welcome, respected, and empowered to thrive—whether in the skies, in the workplace, or across our wider community. As part of our commitment to The Valuable 500, we are dedicated to advancing disability inclusion across all aspects of our business and customer offerings. Our vision is to be an accessible and inclusive airline, ensuring every journey is an opportunity for all customers and employees to experience the world without barriers. This vision extends beyond compliance—it’s about building an airline that truly reflects the diversity of our society and empowers people with disabilities to fly, work, and live with confidence.
We are committed to:
1. Transforming the Customer Experience: We will continue to collaborate with our passengers, disability advocates, and industry partners to design more inclusive environments, services and experiences. From booking and boarding to inflight services, we are working towards removing physical, digital, and attitudinal barriers, ensuring that our products and services are accessible to all.
2. Empowering Our Workforce: Air New Zealand strives to foster an open and inclusive workplace where people of all abilities are supported and celebrated so that they thrive. We are committed to enhancing our recruitment, training, employee experience and career development processes to ensure equal opportunities for people with disabilities. Our Disability Employee Network and partnerships with organisations like Project Employ are key to promoting a culture of inclusion and representation.
3. Innovating with Accessibility in Mind: We are working closely with our industry partners to design accessible cabins for the future. We aim to work with our partners in providing innovative solutions that prioritize accessibility and enhance the experience for customers with disabilities on all our future aircraft. In our new infrastructure builds, Accessibility is a key consideration in the Safety and Wellbeing in Design model at concept phase.
4. Championing Disability Inclusion in Aviation: Air New Zealand is actively involved in Accessibility working groups, where we contribute to shaping global aviation standards that prioritize inclusivity. We are proud to be able to share our journey, ideas and learnings to shape more equitable travel experiences for passengers with disabilities in the global aviation community.
Our commitment towards inclusion is to provide equitable experiences for everyone. We believe that by embedding accessibility and inclusion into everything we do, we can help lead the way to a more connected, inclusive, and equitable future for everyone.
Together, we fly further and higher.
Greg Foran
Chief Executive Officer
Air New Zealand
