Why American Airlines is joining the party on the Auckland-Los Angeles route

Giant United States carrier American Airlines says it adding 51 per cent more capacity into New Zealand this summer to meet strong demand from tourists to see this country.

The airline will add daily flights for summer between Los Angeles (LAX) and Auckland (AKL) just before Christmas, in addition to the daily Dallas-Fort Worth service it resumed last week. The LAX-AKL route is increasingly crowded, with Delta Air Lines last week starting daily flights, United Airlines starting services running three times a week and Air New Zealand flying up to 12 times a week.

One of the big three international airlines in the US, American is on a massive expansion during the Southern Hemisphere summer. Its vice-president of international operations, Jose A. Freig, told the Herald he was confident there was room for all four carriers on the LAX route.

“There are opportunities for us that we see at the moment; a very strong demand, especially at LA for that particular timeframe for the holidays here in the US,” he said .

Much of the traffic on the LAX-Auckland route would be southbound, given the strength of the US dollar and the country’s economy.

Freig said there were high levels of pent-up demand to get to New Zealand, and the high-value US dollar was helping.

‘You have a beautiful country that all of in the US would like to visit, [and] your dollar stretches a bit more,” he said.

“Healthy competition is great for all of us.”

American Airlines would operate a Boeing 787-9 on both the Dallas-Fort Worth and Los Angeles routes.

Demand for New Zealand could mirror the boom in travel from the US to Europe earlier this year.

Jose A. Freig, American Airlines vice-president of international operations Jose A. Freig.

If you think about what happened in the summer of ‘23, it had basically been two years since Americans had been able to travel to Europe, and of course, the demand was really strong.

Tourism NZ will early next year launch more promotional activity in the US market, a high-value visitor base. The influx of capacity from US airlines reflected appetite to visit this country, where total holiday arrivals were running at 78 per cent of pre-pandemic levels.

Freig said this summer, from October 29 until March 30, American Airlines is operating a record international operation, including more than 400 peak-day flights to 117 destinations.

“We’re proud to continue growing our international network by adding even more flying to many of our customers’ favourite destinations around the world, like Auckland, Cancun and Rome, to name a few,” he said.

Auckland Airport has been a pinch point for arriving passengers, with some arriving at peak times complaining of long queues.

Freig said this was happening in other countries as the aviation system is still recovering from the pandemic, during which hundreds of thousands of staff were laid off by airlines, airports, baggage handlers and government agencies.

Frieg said American Airlines was working closely with Auckland Airport to minimise delays for passengers who were paying a “significant amount” of money to make the trip.

“We want to make sure that the experience [of] arrival is seamless. We also understand, and this is where we obviously work very closely with our airport partners to figure out how we could help each other,” he said.

“We still have an environment in many parts of the globe [where] we still don’t have all the workers back. We still don’t have all the immigration officers back and Customs officers back, and there was such a big pause during Covid, and there’s a vacuum [with regard to] training and hiring new people.”

Grant Bradley has been working at the Herald since 1993. He is the Business Herald’s deputy editor and covers aviation and tourism.