Air New Zealand will begin operating a Boeing 787-9
Dreamliner on its Houston-Auckland route in December, CEO Christopher Luxon
announced here Wednesday.
The switch, from a Boeing 777-200, will allow the carrier to
offer more business class and premium economy seats on the route, which Luxon
credits with facilitating a surge in travel to New Zealand from people in the
eastern half of the U.S.
The aircraft change will be timed to coincide with Air New
Zealand's seasonal increase in frequencies on the route to daily from five
times per week.
Luxon's announcement, made at Tourism New Zealand's annual
TRENZ Conference, came on the heels of a 23% year-over-year increase in the
number of Americans who visited New Zealand between April 2016 and March 2017.
With 313,000 arrivals to New Zealand during that 12-month span, the U.S is the
country's third-largest source of visitors behind Australia and China.
Increased airlift has played a role in the 23% jump. United
entered the New Zealand market with flights from San Francisco last summer and
American also inaugurated service to Auckland, making the journey from Los
Angeles.
Those flights, as well as Air New Zealand's Auckland-Houston
service, augmented longer-running Air New Zealand routes to Los Angeles, San
Francisco and Honolulu, as well as a Hawaiian Airline service between Auckland
and Honolulu.
United and Air New Zealand entered into a joint venture in
March 2016, allowing them to coordinate on scheduling, most notably on the
Houston route. Houston is a United hub that is faster to access from the
eastern half of the U.S. than West Coast cities that service Auckland.
Luxon said the Houston flight has helped boost the number of
visitors to New Zealand from the Midwest, Southeast, Northeast and south
central U.S. by 24%, 29%, 11% and 30%, respectively.
Still, the Auckland airport's modeling of visitor demand
versus flight capacity shows that the U.S.-New Zealand market remains 33%
underserved, airport CEO Adrian Littlefield said at the Trenz conference.
Leanne Cheesman, United's national sales manager for New
Zealand, bolstered that assertion, saying that the carrier's San
Francisco-Auckland flight had a load factor of 98% during the New Zealand
summer months of January through March.
Luxon said his job is to educate Americans that New Zealand
is just a 12-hour flight from Los Angeles, perhaps not as far away as they
think.
"They have no idea on geography," he quipped. "Lovely
people, but no idea on geography."