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Air New Zealand targets nonstop New York and Chicago
September 15th 2017
Ultra-long-haul flying is trending across the Asia-Pacific. Read More » First up, Qantas Airways announced nonstop Perth-London B787-9 flights and its group CEO, Alan Joyce, challenged Airbus and Boeing to develop a jetliner capable of flying nonstop from Sydney to New York by 2022.
This week, Air New Zealand (Air NZ) said it also hoped the OEMs would build an aircraft with the range to serve Chicago, New York and Brazil nonstop from the carrier’s Auckland Airport home hub.
Air NZ CEO, Christopher Luxon, said the Star Alliance member was evaluating Airbus’ A350-900ULR against Boeing’s B777X. Air NZ serves Buenos Aires, Houston, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Vancouver with its B777-200ER, -300ER and B787-9 fleets.
Air NZ’s Star fellow, United Airlines, last week announced its second-longest nonstop route, a daily Sydney-Houston B787-9 flight which will start on January 18. The new route would provide one-stop connectivity to more than 70 cities across North America, the airline said.
United has added two ultra-long-haul services from Asia to the U.S. in the last year: the longest route in its network, Singapore-Los Angeles, and Singapore-San Francisco, which is United’s third-longest flight.
The Sydney-Houston service will compete with Qantas’ daily Sydney-Dallas A380 flight, Qantas’ longest route until Perth-London comes online.
Separately, Emirates Airline this week announced a fourth daily Sydney-Dubai A380 rotation, to be added to its network from March 25. The new service will replace capacity to be withdrawn on the route by its alliance partner Qantas, which has announced the termination of its own Sydney/Melbourne-Dubai-London flights. The Australian airline will continue to codeshare on all of Emirates’ flights out of Australia as part of their alliance.
