Air New Zealand ramping up Australia, Pacific Islands flights as new Airbus planes arrive

Tahiti is one of the Pacific destinations set to get more seats. Photo / 123rf

Air New Zealand says it will add 155,000 seats on flights to Australia, Rarotonga, Fiji and Tahiti this summer.

Two new Airbus A321neo aircraft and more customer demand for destinations including Adelaide have been cited as driving the expansion.

“That’s been enabled through two new [A321neos] or narrow-body aircraft being delivered,” said Lucy Hall, the airline’s short-haul general manager.

“They’re 214-seat, narrow-body aircraft. One of them has already arrived and one is on its way, so we’ll be introducing that in the next couple of weeks into our network.”

The airline will this summer also deploy more wide-body aircraft on key routes.

Air New Zealand said the summer expansion would cement its position as the biggest transtasman carrier, ahead of rival Qantas.

The airline will add 8% more premium seats on its short-haul network and have up to 42 flights each week on widebody jets to Australia.

“We’re seeing really strong demand, particularly for Australia,” Hall added.

Perth was an increasingly popular destination for people flying from Auckland, she said.

Australia’s 2021 Census found at least 59,000 New Zealand-born people lived in the city, with three-quarters of them in the workforce.

Hall said Air New Zealand was growing its Auckland-Perth services from one a day to nine a week.

The airline said it would also add 30,000 seats on its Auckland-Perth route.

Hall told the Herald that Adelaide’s food culture and its Fringe Festival, set for February 20 to March 22 next year, were luring Kiwi travellers.

Christchurch–Adelaide is a new transtasman route, starting on October 27.

“We saw previously that a lot of those customers are travelling over the east coast of Australia, so this is just making it easier to get to Adelaide,” Hall said.

She said the airline tracked demand for the big eastern seaboard cities and reached the point where it felt demand was great enough to make that direct service to Adelaide viable.

Rival Qantas last month announced plans for new direct Auckland-Adelaide flights, starting on October 31.

But Air New Zealand said 1.7 million seats would be available on its transtasman flights between October this year and next March.

An average of up to six Air New Zealand wide-body jet flights a day would go to Australia.

The airline also planned an uplift in premium seating to meet what it called strong demand from both business and leisure travellers.

The Auckland-Sydney route would have an extra 25,000 seats, 30% of them premium, and up to 13 services a week.

The Auckland-Brisbane flight would get an extra 18,400 seats over summer.

“There’ll be extra seats over that busy Christmas period, but also in the shoulder periods leading in[to] and following Christmas,” Hall said.

The Auckland-Melbourne route would have up to 16,000 extra seats over summer, and also up to 13 wide-body services a week.

From Auckland to the Gold Coast, another 8500 seats would be added.

Air New Zealand said 25,000 extra seats would also be available on Pacific Islands flights this summer.

The Auckland-Rarotonga route would get 8000 more seats.

On the Fiji route, the Auckland-Nadi service would get 8600 more seats.

The airline said it would add 1600 seats to its Tahiti service, with a 37% increase in premium seating.

Hall said Boeing 787 Dreamliners or 777s serviced the Tahiti route.

John Weekes is a business journalist covering aviation and courts. He has previously covered consumer affairs, crime, politics and courts.