An Air New Zealand passenger, clearly frustrated and fed up with trying to contact the airline (and let’s not blame the carrier – these are tough times and most businesses are struggling to keep up with an overwhelming number of calls, emails, various social media and customer service issues) anyway, this outside-the-box thinker came up with an inspired idea.

The unnamed passenger ran an ad in the New Zealand Herald.

Did it work? Damn right.

Still, it’s not always brilliant to give out information such as your booking code, because it could be used by unscrupulous types to get more personal information, but it was original, and most important in this instance – it worked.

Now, let’s not have everyone calling up the dailies and running ‘contact me’ ads. What worked once as a clever idea will certainly wear thin if the newspapers are flooded with booking codes and demands to be contacted.

Air New Zealand told the aviation newsletter Simple Flying, “We reached out this customer yesterday and are working to assist them with their query. We know that Covid-19 has impacted our customers greatly and we are deeply sorry for the disruption this crisis has caused to so many of our customers’ travel plans. We acknowledge that as we have worked through the thousands of flight cancellations it has often been difficult to get in touch with us. Our Contact Centre has been extremely busy with our teams working extra shifts to help clear backlogs. We would like to thank all of our customers for their patience and understanding over the past two months.”