Air Canada launches YVR-AKL route
 

Awesome!

4x weekly with the following seasonal schedule:
AC51 Vancouver to Auckland departing 11:45PM arriving 11:05AM (+2 days) [Thu, Sat, Mon, Tue]
AC52 Auckland to Vancouver departing 2:40PM arriving 6:40AM [Mon, Wed, Thu, Sat]

Also, I see YUL-GRU 3X weekly starting in Dec 2019.

I missed that! I like that also....

Good for AC that they got this route. As I once posted, NZ is making a lot of money on the YVR-AKL route.

I find it interesting that Lucky is now AC's new Press Release department. And he got his info from a thread on Airliners.net

I looked at AC's Media Centre page and the last news release was Feb 21 "Air Canada to Launch Seasonal Flights Between Calgary and London, Ontario"

If you search AC's page looking for route announcements, you get this. Same for 2018.

I would think that AC would want this front and centre on the news page.


https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...575c76b344.png

Nice to see another route down there.

While AKL is currently a mess, it is a great airport.

The timing isn't great though. It would be nice for it to have it leave earlier and get into AKL to start a business morning.

That said, nice to have another option down there. Congrats to AC

But why would you fly AC if you could go with NZ?

For SEs, if they do open some J "IKK" seats, it would be great. It's absolutely impossible to redeem on NZ...

Because NZ has like zero award availability even in Y?

well NZ has only 26 business class seats on its 777-200 plane, so its no surprise its hard to redeem a J award.
this might be a tough one to compete for AC, because NZ is 50% owned by the govt, profit "might" not be the #1 reason for all of NZ flights.
However awesome AC will add 20 more J seats to the mix, with its tourist 787-8

The schedule is timed for convenient YVR connections + as little on the ground time as possible in AKL + arrival back to YVR at an reasonable hour.

Isnt this timed just as SYD and BNE are - to allow for connections?
I doubt this flight is aimed at the work flyer anyway who goes directly to work on arrival in AKL.


Question remains (aside from award availability) - who in their right mind would choose AC over NZ? (Y,PY or J)
*status chasers and die hard loyalist excluded I guess

Best FF news I have read in years.
I fly this route 3 to 4 times a year on NZ.

My NZ AirPoints anniversary year is Nov, I have Gold Elite (NZ's equivalent to SE100k) in the bag through Nov 2020, then get soft landing to Gold till Nov 2021.
Might need to switch back to AP.

NZ's prices will come down.

Status match?

Sweet! Hopefully there will be award seats available on this flight...

If flying PE I concur 100%
J however, NZ has not kept up. Their bed is better for sleeping, but otherwise prefer AC's cabin layout and ability to recline seat to any position.

AC will just need to follow NZ's policy of zero announcements after normal post take-off and pre-landing. This means zero seat belt announcements during the flight.