AKL is pretty low on the list of places for CI to fly direct and from many accounts not that high yielding. To be competitive I would imagine flights for say an economy ticket would have to be below say 1200 NZD.
It would be a good 3/4 years before any chance of CI going direct plus they have B777 which will come off lease in 6 or so years which they have no replacement for. Current A350-900s are just enough to replace the aging A330 cabins.
I would like to see Air NZ do well as its a win for consumers to have more choice.
The arrival time of 4:50pm would allow tag on flights to say Hong Kong , Bangkok or even to Europe. But most mainland destinations have very limited frequency so I doubt that will be have any chance. The big positive is all those Star alliance members in Taiwan (due to Eva) will now have an option to fly direct where the previous best option was probably like Singapore.