Reaching for the Skies - An End to Isolation

...I came back and I told the directors here, I said "We're known as Tasmanian Airways which is all wrong. Why don't we change — we're going a bit international now — why don't we change it to Air New Zealand?" and they said "Good idea, we'll put it forward at the next board meeting." And it was changed on my birthday, funnily enough.

– Ex Air New Zealand ground engineer Geoff Wells

A group of us had the idea at the end of the war to start our own airline. We did a lot of work on it and had the finances virtually settled, and I went down to see Peter Fraser to see exactly what the government reaction would be. And we were given a very terse and abrupt answer. Fraser said to me, and I still recall his words, he said "Patterson, if you and your people want to fly after the war there's only one way you're going to do it and that's with National Airways because we will not permit any private operations." So that was the end of that story.

– Former NZ National Airways Corporation general manager Doug Patterson