SFO_FT

The AKLJFK sked I see (6Oct22) has the flight dep AKL at 1940 and arrive JFK at 1955. During the northern winter, it arrives JFK at 1740. Both times allow for domestic and international connections.

UA serves upwards of 25+ European destinations nonstop and most major and minor cities along the East Coast from EWR while JFK has no Star Alliance domestic feed (except to SFO and LAX!) and its international Star Alliance flights are limited to the hubs of its European Star partners, some of whom also serve EWR.

nzkarit

Though with MCT
Looking at EWR
From say 1030pm can find a hard MCT quickly but 2.5 seems to be recommended international arrival onwards
SNN GRU LHR PIT TLV IST on *A

kiwifrequentflyer

You would have to allow 4 hours minimum to connect to a flight. That has you boarding another flight at 10pm-12am. The demand to connect to late United flights I honestly doubt exceeds those that want an easier and nicer trip to/from NYC.

samyoull

This topic has been beaten to death around here but clearly NZ targeting JFK isn't about connections at that end, it's because JFK is seen as the premium airport at the NYC metro area and they want to target those passengers bound for NZ, as well as those ex-Australia heading to NYC.

There's far better options to Europe and NZ knows that (hello SQ), if you have to transit the US the I-I connection experience at IAH beats anything else in the network without the weather worries (for most of the year, at least)

Kiwi Flyer

Presumably NZ has assessed there is enough high yield demand for New York to not worry so much about lower yield onward US or intl connections. This is especially important for the economics of Ultra longhaul.

OpenSky

And they funny thing is LH Group doesn't consider EWR part of NYC and doesn't publish fares reflecting that. Do a search, its quite comical .

JFK is the primary NYC international airport.

EWR is a UA hub.

The proof is in the money, you should see what the fares are, and how full the plane is. The flights have been selling very well, despite operating from JFK.
People who need to connect can do though Houston or Chicago.

Peter Snijder

I live on the U.S. east coast and flying to AKL via IAH is 800 miles shorter than going via a New York airport.
Flying via IAH adds a whopping 5 miles (!) to the routing compared to a theoretical nonstop flight from my home airport, so I consider that to be pretty efficient and as good as I can ever hope for. 🤣
For me, flying UA to EWR to connect to an NZ flight from there (if they chose to operate from there instead of JFK) wouldn’t make much sense, and that is true for pretty much everyone on the east coast.

Even for people that live further north along the coast, for example Boston, connecting via IAH or ORD is pretty much the same distance compared to connecting via a New York airport, so there wouldn’t be much benefit for east coast *A fliers if NZ chose EWR over JFK, at least not from a travel time/distance point of view. Additional seat availability would be the only tangible advantage for east coast *A travelers.



A quick example, making the assumption that the timing of the flight out of EWR would be the same as the JFK flight:

BOS-EWR, 16:30 - 18:02
EWR-AKL, 19:40 - 07:30 (+2)

BOS-IAH, 15:28 - 18:53
IAH-AKL, 20:50 - 06:45 (+2)

That’s only a 17 minute difference in travel time, and going via IAH is a slightly longer (and hopefully more reliable) connection.
And you wouldn’t have to take an airside bus to change terminals from the EWR A or C gates (where the BOS flights arrive) to the B gates, where I presume they would have put NZ (together with SK, LH, LO, LX, and the other *A airlines). At IAH it’s a much easier connection from whatever gate the BOS flight arrives at (likely a “C” gate) to the NZ “D” gate.

jawnbc

No.