China Airlines boosts Taipei services

Air services between Auckland and Taiwan are improving, with new services between the two countries via Australia. Photo / Thinkstock

Taiwan's China Airlines is boosting services from New Zealand to Taipei via Sydney.

The airline will fly the route four times a week in addition to its three times a week service to Taipei via Brisbane.

The new Sydney service starts on October 28 and will use an A330-300 aircraft with a total of 307 seats.

Auckland Airport general manager aeronautical commercial, Glenn Wedlock, said the announcement marked a significant step towards stronger trade and tourism links between Taiwan and New Zealand and will deliver opportunities for growth from a number of markets this year.

"We have been working on a number of development programmes in Taiwan and wider Asia as part of our Ambition 2020 initiative. The new services with China Airlines will help deliver on some key targets and drive in excess of $50 million in tourism and trade benefit for New Zealand."

China Airlines, founded in 1959, flies to 28 countries waround the world.

Today's announcement follows Hawaiian Airlines' decision to fly from Auckland to Honolulu from next March and Indonesia's Garuda commitment to restart flights when market conditions allow.

Air New Zealand said it will boost capacity on direct services between Auckland and Queenstown by 32 per cent this summer, including the addition of a fifth daily flight, giving travellers a choice of direct services approximately every two hours.

The increased capacity will take the total number of seats available on direct services over summer to 5200 each way per week. The airline said additional flights are expected to be available for booking from later next week, with four services per day in November (up from three) and five per day from December to the end of March.

As well as the extra flights this summer, additional capacity is also coming through increased use of larger A320 aircraft on some existing services replacing Boeing 737 aircraft.