It has been almost a year since the inaugural Air New Zealand non-stop flight was scheduled to take off from Auckland Airport for New York - in October 2020. Eventually this route was postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but KIWI resumed reservations for these flights.
The iconic NZ1 and NZ2 flights, the 14.200 km route, was to become not only the longest Air New Zealand route and one of the longest commercial flights in the world, only slightly shorter than the Qantas service from Perth to London.
The flight between Auckland and New York had to be operated with a single-configuration Boeing 787-9 aircraft, which provided higher revenues with a smaller number of employees. However, Air New Zealand has not given up its direct flights from New York and believes that the non-stop flight will have a lot of post-pandemic attractions, avoiding stops and keeping passengers relaxed in Dreamliner aircraft, safe.
Future plans. Air New Zealand will drop Boeing 777-300ER aircraft in the coming years.
"We will definitely return to direct flights to New York", said AirNZ CEO Greg Foran. "We see North America as essential to our international business, and we look forward to getting it up and running as soon as possible. We believe that this will generate great demand. "
Air New Zealand will drop Boeing 777-300ER aircraft in the coming years. The company will instead use Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft - which is more fuel efficient - for all long-haul routes to Asia and North America.
The carrier has seven Boeing 777-300ER and 14 Boeing 787-9 aircraft in its fleet, but will replace two 777-300ERs by 2025 with the first two of the 8 Boeing 787-10 aircraft already ordered. The remaining 5 777-300ER aircraft will be retained on the ground as the Dreamliner "Dash 10" aircraft arrive.
Qantas also intends to review its discontinued plans for Project Sunrise, which was to use the fleet of ultra-long-range Airbus A350-1000 aircraft for record flights from Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane to New York, London, Paris and Frankfurt. Qantas has already confirmed that Sydney will be the launch city for the first flights of the Sunrise project "Once international travel recovers".