New Jet Service Takes Off This Month

Two Air New Zealand BAe146 jet aircraft will start flying from 25 June the airline announced today. This marks the first stage of what will be a four BAe146 aircraft operation by mid July, representing a 15% increase in Air New Zealand's domestic network - a total of 2,900 extra seats provided by the airline every day.

The schedule for the first two jets sees the start of the new Auckland-Dunedin non-stop return flight, which was planned for November and announced earlier this month, as well as the introduction of a second Auckland-Queenstown non-stop return flight. Both services will operate daily rather than Monday to Fridays as initially proposed.

Rotorua, Dunedin, Wellington and Christchurch also benefit with increased capacity on existing daily ATR services which will now be upgraded from 66 to 90 seats with the use of the BAe146s.

Air New Zealand President and CEO, Gary Toomey said that the new schedule delivers maximum benefits for those destinations on the airline's network which need them most.

"Since our discussions with regional leaders in several New Zealand centres, the network planning team have been working hard to determine a new schedule that best matches the regions' identified needs.

We are delighted that we now are able to bring not only one but two of the jets into service at the same time, with the other two to follow in the very near future," he said.

The use of a jet on existing services frees up an ATR aircraft which has enabled new return services to be scheduled between Christchurch - Invercargill and Christchurch -Wellington, and two new Christchurch - Dunedin return services Monday to Fridays.

Weekend services will also benefit with one new return flight scheduled on Sundays between Auckland and Christchurch, using the BAe146 aircraft, and additional return services between Christchurch - Invercargill and Christchurch - Wellington using ATR aircraft.

The additional 2,900 seats provided by Air New Zealand National and Link services, combined with Freedom Air's plans to fly up to 2,300 seats in the domestic market, and the additional capacity proposed by other airlines, will more than replace the seats that were available within New Zealand prior to the collapse of Qantas New Zealand.