Air NZ brings its biggest planes back from a deep sleep after several years in the Mojave desert.
Video / Air New Zealand
The last Air New Zealand 777-300 aircraft stored in the Mojave Desert during the pandemic is set to touch down in Auckland tomorrow, after more than two years in storage.
The boosted capacity will build more flexibility into the network for the local airline, which is enjoying a surge indemand and late last month upgraded its profit outlook.
All seven of the airline’s 777-300 aircraft were grounded when the pandemic hit in 2020, with four parked in the desert in the United States and three in Auckland.
It also parked up its smaller and less efficient eight-strong fleet of 777-200s in Roswell, New Mexico but has since disposed of them.
The airline says the warm, dry conditions for the 777-300s in the desert were ideal to keep the aircraft in pristine condition.
The last 342-seat aircraft, registration OKM, is travelling more than 10,000km from Victorville to Auckland via Singapore where contract engineers would do some work, before it gets ready to take off on its first commercial service this Saturday to San Francisco.
Air New Zealand’s chief operations officer Alex Marren says the return of all seven aircraft signals the airline is bouncing back after Covid and customer demand is higher than ever.
“Having all of our 777-300s back will help build more resilience and more seats into our international operation, meaning we can fly more customers to where they need to go - whether that’s to San Francisco, Honolulu, Houston or Tahiti,” Marren said.
It means it can operate 24 return flights every week to Los Angeles, where it will face intense competition in the coming summer, as well as to San Francisco and Chicago. It will offer 3216 more seats into these places when compared with the Boeing 787 aircraft previously used on these routes.
During the busy northern summer period, there will be more than 900,000 seats on the 777 aircraft.
“An incredible amount of work has gone into bringing these aircraft back. The reanimation of OKM alone has taken more than seven weeks and involved more than 1500 man-hours of work,” Marren said.
A team of Air New Zealand engineers have been in Victorville working with a local maintenance provider to reanimate the aircraft.
An Air New Zealand Boeing 777 at Victorville in the Mojave Desert.
The process starts off with unwrapping the 13-year-old plane from its storage protection. Then it gets a good wash, getting rid of the dust and grime that has accumulated in the desert.
Then it goes through a thorough servicing and maintenance programme.
“It’s a long and a complicated process and our engineering and maintenance team have done an amazing job getting the aircraft ready to fly again,” Marren said.
As a final safety check, a pilot team will spend a day running through checks and tests, similar to what’s done when getting a new aircraft from the factory.
“Overall, a team of more than 100 Air New Zealanders have been involved in bringing back these 777 aircraft in some way.”
OKM will undergo a short visit to the Auckland engineering and maintenance hangar before it takes off to San Francisco this weekend.
The 777-300 fleet has an average age of 10.6 years. It has 14 smaller Boeing 787-900 Dreamliners which operate on long-haul routes and seat between 275 and 302 passengers.
It also has eight Dreamliners on order, due to be delivered from later next year. To supplement its long-haul fleet, the airline has wet-leased an Airbus A330 for Perth flights from Spanish charter company Wamos, which provides the plane and crew.
Marren said the airline was investigating other options to bolster its fleet before the arrival of new Dreamliners, including leasing aircraft. Airline bosses had thought long and hard before permanently retiring the older 777-200s and they remained satisfied with the decision.
A full fleet of 777-300s would allow Air NZ to fly more frequently to places such as Chicago.
While the reanimation of the 777 fleet is complete and will add much-needed capacity, its smaller A321 fleet has been hit with Pratt & Whitney engine maintenance issues, forcing it to ground two of its newest planes for a period over winter.
The airline’s general manager short haul, Jeremy O’Brien, said as affected aircraft require maintenance earlier than expected, there has been a minor impact to its schedule over the June – October period.
The majority of customers impacted will only experience a change in time of their flight of up to 90 minutes.
About 4000 will be harder hit.
‘’We apologise for any inconvenience this has caused and will be working with those customers to find an alternate solution.’'
Late last month the airline upgraded pre-tax profit guidance to between $510 million and $560m, up from $450m-$530m.
Analysts at Forsyth Barr said March operating stats show continued strong demand with monthly revenue materially (an estimated 13 per cent) above the same time in 2019.
“Notably, short-haul revenue per available seat km (RASK) has increased relative to that achieved in recent months, due to Air NZ flexing its domestic price settings.”
The analysts continue to assume the airline will pay a final dividend in the current year of 4.7 cents per share reflecting a 40 per cent full-year payout ratio.
