Air New Zealand Air Points - 767s return to CHC

WIDE-BODY AIRCRAFT FOR CHRISTCHURCH - SYDNEY ROUTE

Air New Zealand has confirmed it will be putting a wide-body aircraft back onto its Christchurch - Sydney route as a result of local concerns.

The new Boeing 767-200 aircraft will come into service in late October this year.

“I believe we have listened, we have met face-to-face with concerned customers, we have recognised the problems and we have done something about it,” said Ralph Norris, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director Air New Zealand.

“We understand from Christchurch business and travel industry leaders that current demand is not being met for either passenger or cargo needs and that a 767 aircraft will be well utilised.

“Obviously, we cannot afford to lose money on this route by operating with half full cargo loads and insufficient support from travellers. Therefore, it is our intention to begin the service on a trial basis to gauge if demand is strong enough for it to continue.”

The 200-seater wide-body aircraft will replace one of the Boeing 737-300 aircraft currently servicing this route. This will result in an increase in seat capacity of 38 per cent on this route for Air New Zealand.

Air New Zealand flies twice daily from Christchurch to Sydney. The new 767 service will leave Christchurch mid-afternoon and arrive in Sydney early evening. It will leave Sydney in the morning and arrive in Christchurch by mid-afternoon. It will connect with domestic flights to Queenstown, Dunedin, Invercargill and Nelson.

Late last year, Air New Zealand switched all of its wide-body 767 aircraft to smaller 737 aircraft on its trans-Tasman services from Christchurch. This was because passenger loadings were not sufficient to cover the cost of operating the 767 aircraft and because cargo loads were usually only half full.


* From a personal point of view, I really hope CHC supports this move. The 767s on Trans Tasman routes ex CHC lost money for a long time. They are deadly serious about it being a trial run!

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by airnzboy:

The new Boeing 767-200 aircraft will come into service in late October this year.
</font>

"new Boeing 767-200 aircraft"?

Aircraft -- singular or plural here?

And does new really mean new aircraft as in new from Boeing or rather new to this route and/or new to Air New Zealand?

[Hmmn. Six "new"s in one sentence, a new record?]

*Slips on 'personal speculation* hat*

I believe it would be 'new to Air NZ', as -NBA and -NBJ are already pretty much arranged to leave the fleet soon. That would only leave -NBB and -NBC, which are needed for the AKL based routes.

I would guess one (new to Air NZ) 762 would arrive and do something like SYD-CHC-AKL-CHC-SYD. However, I could be completely wrong of course!



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*Any information given in the email is my personal opinion and not the opinion of my employer.

If, as the press release says, the 'new' 762 will fly CHC-SYD in the afternoon and SYD-CHC in the morning, while the remaining CHC-SYD flights stay with the 733, that creates a bit of a scheduling puzzle. At the moment, the 733's operating on WLG/SYD and CHC/SYD do two return flights a day: one early morning returning by early afternoon, and one mid-afternoon returning around midnight, before overnighting in NZ. If the 762 is only going to do one return SYD-CHC flight a day, where will it go in the meantime? Will they also fly it on the WLG/SYD route once a day, departing SYD early evening and departing WLG early morning, while the ex-WLG 733 flies the CHC routes? It's difficult to see how it could fit into the AKL schedule, although the aircraft currently flying that route are a bit under-utilised, flying only 1.5 return flights per day instead of the 2 return flights flown by the other trans-Tasman aircraft. Is AirNZ planning some new routes ex-SYD that we don't know about? Could this be a glimmer of hope for some AirNZ domestic Australian services?!?

Or - and this, sadly, is by far the most likely scenario - is the press release just wrong?

767's cannot fly out of WLG with pax. They can land but the runway is too short for them to take off again unless no cargo or pax.

Of course maybe NZ is assuming the no cargo/no pax option? http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif

But yes the scheduling is a bit of a mystery. Just wish NZ would get it right, a it is getting quite difficult to book a Y or C class flight at short notice out of CHC. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif

Mark

The 767-200 can fly out of WLG. NZ has flown them into and out of WLG before. There also used to be trans-Tasman flights operated by both QF and NZ as well. Not sure about the 767-300 though, although at one stage QF did fly 747-SPs into WLG

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UA 1P, QF Silver
I like NZ,NG,NH,UA,SK,LH & QF
Star Alliance defecting to Oneworld

Isn't it possible to have a B733 depart early morning CHC-SYD, then SYD-WLG-SYD, then SYD-CHC ? And then a B767-200 depart early morning AKL-SYD, then SYD-CHC-SYD, then SYD-AKL ? You would then need a mid-morning B767-200/300 perhaps departing some 2 hours after the earlier AKL-SYD doing AKL-SYD-AKL so that there will be a SYD-AKL flight that arrives back at AKL around 4 pm or thereabouts.

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UA 1P, QF Silver
I like NZ,NG,NH,UA,SK,LH & QF
Star Alliance defecting to Oneworld

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by igel:
Isn't it possible to have a B733 depart early morning CHC-SYD, then SYD-WLG-SYD, then SYD-CHC ? And then a B767-200 depart early morning AKL-SYD, then SYD-CHC-SYD, then SYD-AKL ? You would then need a mid-morning B767-200/300 perhaps departing some 2 hours after the earlier AKL-SYD doing AKL-SYD-AKL so that there will be a SYD-AKL flight that arrives back at AKL around 4 pm or thereabouts.</font>

You could, but that would only give you one daily SYD-WLG return flight, whereas currently there are two.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally quoted by Koru Flyer:
767's cannot fly out of WLG with pax. They can land but the runway is too short for them to take off again unless no cargo or pax.
Of course maybe NZ is assuming the no cargo/no pax option? </font>

I know I have flown out of WLG on a 767 on QF, about 4 years ago, and when I was last there at Easter this year I was surprised to see a QF767 taking off. Where it was going, I have no idea - when I look at QF's current schedules out of WLG I can't see any 767's. Airliners.net have a pic of a QF 763 in WLG (http://www.airliners.net/open.file?id=028479&WxsIERv=Qm9laW5nIDc2Ny0zMzgvRVI) in March '99. I'm pretty sure that NZ used to operate a 762 on the AKL-WLG route during the morning peak time several years ago, too.

Having said that, I doubt they are going to upgauge one of the WLG flights, since they seem to be doing lots of promotions to encourage people to use them (AirPoints deals ex NZ, and some very cheap airfares ex Aus, for example) which would seem to indicate they are not doing very well. I'm surprised by this since whenever I fly them they always seem completely full... perhaps airnzboy can shed some light?

(edited due to URL problems)

[This message has been edited by mad_atta (edited 05-15-2002).]

I think given the latest promotion (really good deals on companion tickets.. but when you're ex AKL or CHC, you have to transit via WLG!) speaks for itself about the strength of ex-WLG Trans-Tasman services!



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*Any information given in the email is my personal opinion and not the opinion of my employer.

Okay I stand corrected. I had thought it was that 767s could land but could only take off with and empty load. Blame a trade magazine for that one!

Incidentally, WLG can also take a 777 http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif But that is only for the Queen! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif

Mark

NZ have spare 767 because they physically drop the CHC-SIN flight. They still have code share with SQ though.

NZ used to fly 767s AKL-WLG every day around the peaks (late 1980s at least) and then QF had a 767 at least once a day to Sydney. They can land and take-off just fine at WLG. It's 747s that are the problem. I watched an empty 747 do rolling touchdowns (about 10-12 times) one day back in '87, just to prove they could. I think one day when AKL and CHC were fogged in, they landed a UA 747 ex-LAX and had to ship everyone and their bags out on 737s and then fly the plane out empty!

Originally posted by Sanguan:
"NZ have spare 767 because they physically drop the CHC-SIN flight."

Well normally the same 767-300 is used for a week or so when NZ used to fly SIN-CHC-SIN. A typical rotation is eg starting from a Saturday,
AKL-SIN-CHC-SIN-AKL-SIN-CHC-SIN-CHC-SIN-CHC-SIN-AKL-SIN-AKL.
Now it is just AKL-SIN-AKL-etc.
So basically only 1 B767 is needed whether the flight does SIN-AKL or SIN-CHC. I notice that usually another B767-300 is normally substituted on a Saturday at AKL weekly so that the original one could possibly go for its weekly check and then substituted elsewhere. Of course, now that NZ does AKL-SIN-AKL only, other B767-300 could possibly be substituted at AKL if the original one goes mechanical



[This message has been edited by igel (edited 05-16-2002).]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by mad_atta:
It's difficult to see how it could fit into the AKL schedule, although the aircraft currently flying that route are a bit under-utilised, flying only 1.5 return flights per day instead of the 2 return flights flown by the other trans-Tasman aircraft.</font>

Looks like I answered my own question there. The upgauged CHC-SYD flights will be flown by one of those under-utilised 762's flying AKL-SYD, meanwhile the 733 which would otherwise be flying one of the two daily CHC-SYD services will be used to add an extra daily AKL-SYD service. So, more seats between SYD-AKL and SYD-CHC but using the same number of aircraft - cunning! It does mean, however, that on some days of the week each of the four daily AKL-SYD services is operated by a different aircraft type: 733, 762, 763 and 744.

For those who are interested, other increases to international schedules are announced here (http://www.airnz.co.nz/mediacentre/pressreleases/index.jsp?articleId=21955&pid=12001).

The international increases sound great, especially the 2x daily LA and 1x daily HK flights. Will the second LAX flight basically be NZ5/6, i.e. leaving and arriving a few hours later than NZ1/2?

Cheers, Zac