Air New Zealand Air Points - 777 AKl to PER

Hi all

I picked up some family at Perth airport who had traveled from Auckland on Saturday and noticed that the plane was a 777 instead of the usual 767.

Is it common for this to occur. I am flying business to Auckland in Nov and would love to get the 777 seats.

Cheers

It must have been an operational replacement.

I have looked at AKL - PER flights for the rest of the year.

The daily NZ175 flight is operated by a 763 aircraft.

I think WLG Base is correct - I was at AKL on Sunday and noticed that the arrival of the PER-AKL sector was almost 6pm, instead of the 7am (or whatever it normally is) arrival... leading me to think there must've been an a/c sub which lead to the delay, or was the resolution to the delay..

Oh well!

It was a pretty swish looking plane.

Thanks

Not normal. In all the times I've flown that route it has always been 767, even when significantly delayed.

d29971,

Any way of asking your family how full their flight was? I think id give staff travel a miss and use Air NZ to PER when I visit my family there if it was a 777, its too long down the back on the 767. . . maybe one day.

I'm sure it wasn't related to loads. Just one of those things that happens and can't plan for (a bit like getting a QF 734 on domestic NZ flights :p). I think you'll need to wait a few more years before the 763 is phased out.

I didnt think it was because of the loads - I was actually curious how empty the 777 would have seemed on the route.

Load was very light. There were 4 of them, at the back of the plane and able to all move to window seats.

Cheers

I can confirm NZ 772ER ZK-OKF operated AKL-PER-AKL flights on SAT/SUN 15/16 SEP 2007.

ZK-OKF B777-219 (ER) ANZ NZ0175 17:39 Auckland - Perth 15SEP
ZK-OKF B777-219 (ER) ANZ NZ0176 07:06 Perth - Auckland 16SEP

As you can see it also remained at PER o/night:

GATE 3
BAY 53
A-C OPS 176 AKL 0735
A C TO BE TOWED TO 56 O/N
[*Name Removed*], QANTAS PERTH

It's my understanding the 767 that was scheduled to operate AKL-PER-AKL was stuck in Apia for reasons unknown and was obviously unable to operate the AKL-PER-AKL service.

So as you can see the switch from 763 to 772 equipment was due to operational reasons.

Hope that clears things up :)

Regards

Thanks for the info QF NB.... reliable as always ^

Would have been a much much better product and to the J passengers and premium FF's they would have been very very happy people.

If NZ advertised the flight in WA they would do much better on the flight and could fill a 777 a few times a week and have a 767 the other days. 10% of WA's population are Kiwis, and it really annoys me that NZ dont advertise the fact that they have a direct flight to New Zealand.

I'm struggling to grasp why you could possibly think a 777 on a route that is..

a) a monopoly
b) high proportion of low yielding traffic
c) long enough to require an aircraft dedicated it

could possibly make sense.

The route already does very well and doesn't really need advertising. You're always going to get the passengers who go on QF via Melbourne to save twenty bucks, and enough Kiwis are aware of the flight to give it very respectable load factors year round.

Perth's a boom town and NZ could do a lot better here, both by promoting the direct flight and also by catering for the poorly-served Perth-USA market in at least one direction for the summer schedule...

... with a new timetable eg
PER 11.00 AKL 21.20 connecting to NZ2 to LAX at 23.00
[and AKL 06.00 PER 09.45 just misconnecting from NZ1 which arrives at 05.45]

... thus appealing to the oil-industry PER-IAH commuters who could leave PER at 11am and arrive in IAH the same evening.


Edit: Or go the whole hog PER-LAX-PER via AKL:
PER 12.00 to AKL arr 22.20 dep 23.55 to LAX arr 14.40 dep 18.00 to AKL arr 04.30 dep 06.45 to PER arr 10.30