Air New Zealand Air Points - Help: Minimum transit time

Hi All,

After a stay in SFO, I'm planning to fly NZ back home to SYD.. but I want to take a bit of a new routing than the usual SFO-AKL-SYD routing.

I am lookig at doing SFO-AKL-MEL with NZ, and then MEL-SYD with DJ. My question relates to the minimum advised time between flights. The thing is, I will be booking the SFO-AKL flight on a seperate ticket to the AKL-MEL flight. The SFO-AKL flight has a scheduled arrival time of 5.10am... but the AKL-MEL flight departs at 7.40am.

Will this be enough time to go through Immigration, Customs and then check-in in-time to board the 7.40am MEL flight? :(


Thanks in advance for any help,

- Shameel Kumar

As long as your checked bags and tagged through (which can be done upon showing the onward ticket at check in at SFO), then no need to clear immigration or customs at AKL. International transits in most places outside USA is fairly straight forward.

On arrival simply follow the signs for international transit - on the right hand side before the arrival duty free. Go through rescreening. You will need to show onward ticket here. Collect boarding pass at the transfer desk upstairs (or at the lounge if you have lounge access).

2:30 is ample time for an int->int connection. However if the SFO-AKL flight is very late you do risk misconnecting. Since you are continuing on another NZ flight they most likely will reaccommodate (on the afternoon AKL-MEL flight, subject to space) but they are under no obligation to do so.

As long as your checked bags and tagged through (which can be done upon showing the onward ticket at check in at SFO), then no need to clear immigration or customs at AKL.

Thank you for pointing that out mate.. total life-saver! I was going to be worried about cutting it close, but if the bags are able to be tagged through to the MEL flight and I can transit straight through to the departures area, then 2.5hours is good for me. :)

On arrival simply follow the signs for international transit - on the right hand side before the arrival duty free. Go through rescreening. You will need to show onward ticket here. Collect boarding pass at the transfer desk upstairs (or at the lounge if you have lounge access).

Thank you for the heads-up on that as well. Makes everything a lot easier since I've transitted through AKL on numerous occasions.



2:30 is ample time for an int->int connection. However if the SFO-AKL flight is very late you do risk misconnecting. Since you are continuing on another NZ flight they most likely will reaccommodate (on the afternoon AKL-MEL flight, subject to space) but they are under no obligation to do so.

Thank you for clearing that up as well. Well if I miss my MEL flight, I'll be concerned more about my DJ flight from MEL to SYD.. but fingers crossed that won't happen. I've flown SFO-AKL about 5 times and never has the plane been excessively late... just give or take 15mins usually. So I'm hoping it's the same reliability and on-time performance for this flight. :)


Thank you again for all your help Kiwi Flyer ^:)