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Air New Zealand to study future wide body fleet requirements
June 16th 2017
Auckland-based Air New Zealand (Air NZ) will start evaluating a wide body order later this year, its CEO, Christopher Luxon, has told Orient Aviation. Read More »
According to the Air NZ boss, Airbus’ A350 series, including the -1000 and ULR variants, would be considered as well as Boeing’s competing B777X series and the B787-10.
The deciding factor would be the range of the aircraft. Air NZ is planning to grow its Pacific Rim network, particularly with more flights to the U.S. and South America, so any fleet addition would need to offer the extra range to reach destinations further than Buenos Aires and Houston, currently the carrier’s longest routes.
Orient Aviation understands that potential routes to Chicago, Toronto or New York are being considered in the planning for the airline’s future wide body fleet additions.
Air NZ operates an all-Airbus single aisle and an all-Boeing wide body fleet of 30 A320s, nine B787-9s, eight B777-200ERs and seven B777-300ERs.
It has nine A320neo and four A321neo on direct order from Airbus. They will replace the carrier’s older A320ceo on trans-Tasman routes. Earlier this month, Air NZ postponed first delivery of these aircraft from later this year to July 2018 to allow for A321neo interiors modification for 214 seats rather than the planned 209 seats. To mitigate the changes in the delivery schedule, Air NZ has extended leases on five current A320ceo.
Luxon also expects four more B787-9s to be delivered before year-end. “Upfront is doing really well. We have four more B787-9s coming in this year. They will be in a configuration that will be a lot more Business Premier, a lot more premium economy and less economy,” he told Orient Aviation in May.
