Air NZ announces added America services
Air New Zealand will be upping South American services towards the end of this year as well as changing aircrafts on another North American route, the airline’s CEO Christopher Luxon announced at TRENZ this morning.
International media, including Travel Weekly, were the first to hear the news, which includes more services on its Buenos Aires routes by the close of the year, plus a fancy Dreamliner for the Houston route.
Air NZ is increasing its Buenos Aires services from three weekly services to five during peak periods as of November 2017, while its Houston route will now be flying the Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner year round on the Houston route, with up to seven services per week during the peak season.
The new Dreamliner aircraft on the Houston route is configured differently to the current Dreamliner fleet, with more Business Premier and Premium Economy seats available.
“It wasn’t long ago that [Buenos Aires] was launched with just three services,” Luxon said, claiming the route has been “pretty successful”.
“Air New Zealand is 35 per cent bigger than we were four to five years ago.
But Luxon admitted to being “cagey” about revealing future plans, saying there’s “nothing to announce yet”, but that the airline is “still fixated on growth”.
Luxon told Travel Weekly the airline reviews its networks and routes every quarter in order to evaluate its operations, which “forms the basis of deciding where to go next”.
One big focus for Luxon was to overcome people’s perceptions on New Zealand as a country and what the national carrier is capable of.
“A key challenge we have in the US is they say it takes 41 hours to get to New Zealand on a plane, when the reality is it takes 12 hours.
“People say we’re really far away, but we’re actually really connected; we’re bang smack in the middle of it and have a geography to get us into the north and south of America.”
Luxon added the move to put services into Houston was “very deliberate” in order to unlock major US hubs like the south and coast.
Email the Travel Weekly team at traveldesk@travelweekly.com.au
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