The iconic black and white fleet of aircraft and Koru symbol tails will soon be flying travellers from Auckland to New York, direct, on one of the longest commercial services in the world.
The Auckland to New York route was originally penned to take off back in October 2020, but the global pandemic put those plans on hold.
The flight will be one of the longest commercial services in the world, at 15 hours 40 minutes from Auckland, and 17 hours 40 minutes from New York.
Despite the remaining uncertainty around future travel demand and ongoing impacts on financial performance, Air New Zealand CEO Greg Foran says he can see light ahead for the airline.
“Looking at what is happening around the world and at home, we can see the path back to the Revive phase of our Survive, Revive, Thrive plan.
“We’re bringing back approximately 250 cabin crew and pilots and have reanimated one of our Boeing 777-300s to do some of the cargo heavy lifting.
“Looking further out to the end of this calendar year, we will be ramping up more passenger flights to North America and looking forward to starting up our direct service to New York City,” he said.
The airline says details on the marathon journey and a start date will be released in the coming weeks.
Earlier this month Air New Zealand confirmed the scheduled restart of 24 international routes across the Tasman and various long-haul destinations, beginning at the end of February.
The first routes to take off are:
- February 28: Christchurch to Brisbane, initially three-weekly flights
- March 1: Christchurch to Sydney, three-weekly
- March 2: Auckland-Gold Coast, three-weekly
- March 27: Auckland-Singapore, three-weekly
- March 31: from Brisbane-Wellington (April 1 to Brisbane), three-weekly
- April 4: Wellington-Melbourne, twice-weekly
- April 5: Wellington-Sydney, three-weekly
- April 14: Auckland-San Francisco, three-weekly
The national carrier’s rebooted flight schedule aligns with New Zealand beginning a phased reopening to the world, starting with Australian-based Kiwis being allowed to return from February 28 who will be allowed to sidestep mandatory hotel quarantine (MIQ), and instead self-isolate on arrival.
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