Covid 19 coronavirus: Air New Zealand announce essential Tauranga route in alert level 3

The airline will operate a limited domestic schedule to enable essential travel only and to keep air freight moving. Photo / File

Tauranga Airport is set to benefit as one of the few locations Air New Zealand flights will travel to in alert level 3.

Air New Zealand announced today that from next Tuesday, Tauranga will get three return flights to Auckland a week. There would be one return flight a day on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays until the country was moved to Alert Level 2.

The airline will operate a limited domestic schedule to enable essential travel only and to keep air freight moving.

Locations included Tauranga, Christchurch, Nelson, Napier, Wellington and Auckland.

Currently, there was no commercial air traffic in the city so the announcement was welcomed by Tauranga Airport manager Ray Dumble.

He said the new services were "essential" and could see about 25 passengers entering the city a day.

"It is the only air traffic we will have."

Physical distancing precautions would be in place for every flight, he said.

Air New Zealand general manager networks, Scott Carr, said travel remained very restricted under alert level 3.

"We have made some slight adjustments to our domestic schedule in the coming weeks and that includes adding several services a week between Auckland and Napier and Auckland and Tauranga.

"We'll also be adding additional capacity between Christchurch and Dunedin with flights in and out of Dunedin across the week."

• Covid19.govt.nz: The Government's official Covid-19 advisory website

Dumble said there would need to be a bit of thought on what alert level 2 will look like and how they may operate.

"We will definitely see a change, once we reach level 2,"

"Connectivity for our city is so important ... we have always had huge demand for air travel to the region."

ALERT LEVEL 3 FLIGHT SCHEDULE:

Auckland-Christchurch

2x return services Mon-Sat
1x return service Sun

Auckland-Wellington

1x return service Mon-Sun

Auckland-Tauranga

3x return services Tues/Thurs/Fri

Auckland-Napier

3x return services Tues/Thurs/Fri

Wellington-Christchurch

2x return services Mon-Fri
1x return service Sat/Sun

Wellington-Nelson

1x return service Mon-Wed
2x return services Thurs/Fri

Christchurch-Dunedin

1x return service Mon-Sun