When blogger BustedBlonde found her Koru Hour pack had been downgraded from three to two crackers, she began a Facebook petition.

Kiwiblog’s David Farrar and other frequent Air New Zealand flyers quickly signed on.

On her roarprawn blog, Ms Blonde said she estimates the cheese in the back warrants six crackers. Three was a struggle - “So imagine our dismay and the dismay of some close by passengers, when we discovered the three cracker pack had suddenly been hit by the recession and was now a two cracker pack.”

A purser was unable to offer an explanation to cracker-starved flyers.

Could this be the beginning of the end? After all, during the 1987 recession, American Airlines famously saved $US40,000 by removing an olive from every salad, but became a textbook PR disaster in the process (not to mention the father of the pejorative phrase “counting olives”).

NBR approached our national carrier for comment.

Is Air NZ counting crackers?

“I’ve spoken with our product team and we’re not reducing the number of crackers that we hand out,” said spokeswoman Tracy Mills.

Air New Zealand‘s stock of three-cracker packets is running low, so for the next few weeks our customers will be receiving four crackers (two packets of two) with their cheese and wine.