sbiddle

Presumably they'll lease the other slot to somebody.

Top of climb

But you could do this now?

samyoull

Yeah this confuses me, there's already at least once a day one stop routings on *A BRU-AKL, and the CX/NZ JV has an option most days too.

downinit

This is very bad news for LAX, as that was absolutely the best way to get to LHR (and my preferred route to Europe, despite the connection in LHR). EWR is definitely a horrible airport all around, so there is certainly no benefit for connecting passengers to LHR. It does slightly benefit people going from NZ to EU (if they don't mind a codeshare on a terrible airline like UA), but is a terrible loss for LAX and LHR pax. I am going to miss NZ, as it was definitely one of my favorite airlines. Hopefully, I will be able to squeeze in another trip to RAR before they axe that route, as well.

Aspen

Fellow * Alliance partner United would have to be high on the list of likely candidates to take over ANZ's LHR slots

samyoull

LHR-LAX was/is a bloodbath and that's why NZ's leaving, they were getting squeezed on that city pair in tandem with getting less traffic going all the way AKL-LHR and vv.

They're not going to axe RAR, it's pretty heavily subsidised by the Cook Islands government.

sbiddle

NZ aren't leaving solely because it's a bloodbath.

Yes the route may be a bloodbath, but Air NZ are having no trouble maintaining high value customers on that route and it is still profitable. The route has been reviewed many times, and has always managed to survive simply because Air NZ saw merit in having the Koru flying to LHR.

Those days however are now gone, and you only have to read the investor and analyst presentations for the past couple of years to understand where their focus now lies, and more importantly that their focus is on routes and destinations where growth potential exists. There is zero growth potential on the LAX-LHR route.

US routes particularly IAH, ORD still have significant growth potential, and Air NZ beating QF to NY is pretty important to them. They don't want to buy more planes which leaves them with the option of delivering better results with the aircraft they have - and that means making the tough decision to end one route because there is better potential reallocating those resources elsewhere.

tshirt

united just announced a new EWR-LHR flight starting in 2020. ( but people think they got the slot from LH)

libertyuk

I'd expect that dropping LAX-LHR also means that the 77W fleet may not need to be replaced in due course, if it can fly 787-10 as the higher capacity aircraft AKL-LAX/SFO, or simply increase frequencies, then it need not consider keeping any of the 777 fleet at all.

USA_flyer

Less competition on the LHR-LAX route will mean higher fares with those airlines still plying that route.

What a pity.

tshirt

with so many airlines "skipping" LAX now there might be a lot less demand to go LAX-LHR. Also with NZ outdated business class it was not competitive in the market, unless they had a cheap ticket. Also a real Polaris seat is far superior to what NZ is offering.
AA, Qantas, UA and even NZ are flying past LAX with passengers so perhaps the LAX-LHR route will have a lot less passengers competing for seat.

kiwifrequentflyer

Except Air NZ was NOT the cheapest, they didn't have problems making money from it and while people on here complain to infinity about the seats, a lot of other people (myself included) actually prefer them because it's one of the comfiest beds in the sky, which is why they have no problems selling their premium cabins...

Money speaks a lot louder than flyertalk posts and as another poster explained, there were very different reasons than being "uncompetitive" that air nz pulled out: mainly they wanted the prize that was NYC and this was the best route to swap for it since they don't have infinite planes.

sbiddle

We get the fact that *you* hate the NZ BP seat. You don't need go go on about this like a stuck record..

I mean the seat is so bad and so many people hate it that NZ most days have close to 100% load factors on premium cabins with pax willing to pay a significant premium on the route over every other airline on that route...Oh wait.

tshirt

come on its easy to have high loads when you have so few J seats. interesting you feel the need to defend NZ like a stuck record. ( its a govt airline chill out)

kiwifrequentflyer

It's no less interesting that he defends Air NZ as it is interesting that you felt the need to go into two threads and derailed them to complain about J? I mean you can if you like but don't act surprised when people call your post out for being outrightly wrong (they didn't have to discount to fill their seats) and then for some reason bring the fact that the government owns the majority of Air NZ. What does that have to do with anything?