Air New Zealand has announced a new non-stop service between Auckland and New York. Kicking off in October 2020, Air New Zealand will operate the service with a 787-9 Dreamliner. This will be a more premium heavy configuration than their existing 787 aircraft.
Air New Zealand has also announced that it will withdraw from flying to London via its daily Los Angeles-London service at the same time.
The aircraft
Air New Zealand are planning to use 787-9 ‘code-2’ aircraft on the route. This is a modified configuration which consists of a total of 275 seats. Overall, this is a more ‘premium configuration’ than the current 787-9 aircraft. Thatis to say that it has a higher proportion of Business Premier and Premium Economy seating.
To put that into perspective, the new configuration consists of 27 Business Premier, 33 Premium Economy, and 215 Economy Seats. In comparison, the original configuration consists of 18 Business Premier, 21 Premium Economy, and 263 Economy Seats.
The flight schedule
At this time, Air New Zealand has not released the flight schedule at the moment. Apparently, they are still waiting on confirmation of landing slots, so they aren’t in a position to release a schedule at the moment.
Having said that. we do know that they plan to operate the service between Auckland and Newark Liberty International Airport three times weekly, year-round.
The flight is scheduled with a flight time of 15hr 40m northbound and 17hr 40m southbound. At 14,178 kilometres, the route will be the longest in the Air New Zealand’s network.
Air New Zealand expects tickets on the new service to go on sale soon.
