“Running an international airline is easy” – said nobody, ever. Many great entrepreneurs have tried and many have failed. The airline business is expensive, complicated and fraught with difficulties. As passengers, we may sometimes think of airlines as disorganised but the ballet of logistics that go into making an airline run is truly amazing.
But when you last stepped on a plane, you probably didn’t spend much time wondering how the neatly packed headsets left on every seat got there. After all, each set of headphones is reused time and time again. Who’s job is it to clean and repack them for yet another set of passengers?
Luckily, if you’re now aching for this question to be answered, Air New Zealand has stepped in to provide the solution. Here’s what the airline’s headsets look like after a flight:
And here’s what the same headphones look like, ready for the next flight:
So how does Air New Zealand do it? The airline works with a Kiwi social enterprise called Altus Enterprises – the company employs around 195 people with disabilities for contract packaging tasks. And one of their biggest contracts is cleaning and repacking Air New Zealand’s headphones.
Based in Auckland, Altus has been helping disabled into a rewarding job for the past 53 years. In that time, the company has employed over 10,000 people – who may otherwise have struggled to find a job on the traditional job market.
Altus describes Air New Zealand as one of its strongest partners, so it’s fitting that the airline visited the company’s headquarters just before Christmas to celebrate the work of the Altus employees. They even put together a video to show exactly how it’s done…
