MVF Trekker

"Air New Zealand announced today that it will launch three-times weekly services to Argentina's capital Buenos Aires late next year using a newly refurbished 304-seat Boeing 777-200ER.

Air New Zealand will also bring competition to trans-South Pacific route which has been dominated by Chile's national carrier LAN Airlines for the past 13 years.

LAN offers fares of about $2500 from Auckland to Chile return, but as high as $4000 return over the current summer peak season.

Argentina's national carrier, Aerolineas Argentinas, pulled off the Auckland to Buenos Aires route in 2012 due to high fuel prices and other costs.

Air New Zealand will code share with Aerolineas on connecting services from Buenos Aires to Brazil while Aerolineas will code share on Air New Zealand's Pacific Island and Trans-Tasman services.

The falling cost of fuel made a South American route financially viable for Air New Zealand.

Luxon said the possibility of rising fuel prices had been factored into planning for the route.

An Air New Zealand source said this month the airline is also considering flying between Auckland and either Las Vegas, Houston or Chicago."

Cheaper South American airfares on the cards

Air NZ unveils new flights to Buenos Aires

Blackcloud

This has been discussed in two separate threads, but we never did start is own thread.
I do find it laughable that they said the falling cost of fuel has made it financially viable.
Surely oil will rise again so doe this mean the route will be dropped?

GRUflyer

I can see LA launching GRU-AKL three weekly to connect with their daily SCL-AKL-SYD service and just knock down NZ's service.

Or do they realistically think EZE O&D will fill the plane?

HIDDY

This is great news. I loved New Zealand and want to visit again. ^

Let's hope they last longer than QF to SYD did.

poopbunny

Went there when QF had a direct flight from AKL.

Could not understand why a top fashion model would be dressed in overalls unloading luggage at the airport.

Then I exit the airport and see every second woman looked similar.

Can't wait to go back.

mad_atta

Yep, let's hope this isn't NZ overstretching itself... but it's pretty risk-averse these days, and it does have quite a low cost base (much lower than QF) and seems to have agreed some sort of tie-up with AR so they just might be able to make it work.

The parlous state of the Argentinian economy must be a bit of a worry, though. I guess it's making Argentina cheaper again as a tourist destination, though, so could stimulate leisure traffic.

Blackcloud

IIRC QF used its OW partner LAN for onward connections in Argentina and other SA countries. Then LAN Argentina seemed to have a series of troubles with the local authorities and QF moved its services to SCL, AR was still flying to SYD, and seems to be happy about this.

NZ has partnered with AR, some would say this is a very good move for a risk adverse airline.

NZbutterfly

I'm absolutely stoked they're flying to Argentina! The Galápagos Islands are on my bucket list although when I went to the travel agent I was like.."who are LAN?? And are they safe??" It's a really long flight and the business class on you tube didn't look anything like the air NZ product but huge prices on their website... Mind you, time of yr was around carnaval in Rio and since then I've been thinking "how else can I get there with an airline I trust?"

Despite the flack some people give air nz I love them and feel safe on them. If I'm overseas I always feel like I'm already home when I step onto the plane. I trust some other airlines but I guess I'm just most familiar with nz so I'm really happy they're going to start flying there. Means I can tick off the biggest thing on my bucket list

I think the move makes sense now Argentina are part of the old tri nations?? (Sorry am far from up on the play with rugby) and they seem to have an entourage of kiwi fans that will follow them to away games. Making nz a hub for oz and Asia traffic getting to South America is a very smart move. Asians appear to be hard workers that will get stuck into any market they can get their hands on. Given the existing air NZ connections in Asia I think more people will fly through on NZ rather than LAN. And I would definitely book air NZ over LAN given the familiarity. I don't mind taking the shorter internal flights with local airlines.

Good on them I say!

Top of climb

Interesting; I'd take LA over NZ any day in J and definitely LA over AR which is what the NZ service would require if I wanted a through connection to anywhere through EZE. Hope the NZ service does well though. One of the big drivers of the AKL 2030 masterplan is to build it up as an airport for connections from South America through to Asia-Pacific, and that won't happen without some serious focus on LATAM (geographic region not airline group) routes.

Markhm

Will Rico make a long-awaited comeback as the face of NZs Sth America operations?

johnnyfive

What about setting up some codeshares with CM(*A partner)? You could get to pretty much anywhere in Latin America via PTY. Only makes sense when you're going to Central America or Caribbean, unless you don't mind flying north then south again if the price is right! .

Could you please tell us what you like more about J in LA. I just don't know about it.

Cheers

cavemanzk

Isn't he dead? and now an museum item in Te Papa, maybe they could find his long lost family?

tuchop

Any updates or new information on this route? The newsletter said they would start selling tickets as of March, "subject to obtaining necessarily approvals". Any idea how are those approvals going?

clum90

Indeed. I can confirm I visited the legend himself a couple weeks ago. Laid a flower in front of his display and said a couple nice words.

tuchop

Any updates on this?? Are tickets going to be sold as of march? ANZ has not released a new statement regarding this new route!