Air NZ confirms Chicago

Air NZ confirms Chicago

AIR New Zealand’s new non-stop flights from Auckland to Chicago (TD breaking news) are a further extension of the carrier’s Americas strategy, which firmly targets Australian travellers linking to its US, Canada and South America flights via trans-Tasman services.

NZ chief commercial officer Cam Wallace told TD this morning the new route was “designed perfectly for connections out of Australia,” while within the USA onward flights were available with joint venture partner United Airlines to more than 100 destinations.

Air New Zealand will launch the new route on 30 Nov, with thrice weekly Boeing 787-9 flights taking about 15 hours northbound and just over 16 hours on the return sector each Wed, Fri and Sun.

United Airlines is also expanding its capacity to New Zealand, confirming the extension of its current seasonal Auckland-San Francisco flights to a year-round operation from Apr 2019.

Air New Zealand has heavily marketed its Americas flights in Australia via the ‘Dave the Goose’ campaign featuring Bryan Brown.

Chicago (see cover wrap) is the sixth destination in the NZ Americas network, alongside Los Angeles, Houston, Vancouver, San Francisco and Buenos Aires.

UA international vice president Patrick Quayle said “by adding Chicago to the Air New Zealand route network, and with United’s increased service between San Francisco and Auckland, we are proud to offer our customers more ways to get between the United States and New Zealand and more connection opportunities in those cities than any other airline in the world”.

Wallace said the new flights further strengthened NZ’s partnership with United Airlines.

“We’ll take any Australians to Chicago – even cricketers,” he said.

Source: traveldaily