Air New Zealand Plots Return to London

Air New Zealand still plans to return to London after quitting the airport in 2020. This follows the airline having to drop plans to restart flights in mid-2025 because of a shortage of planes.

Air New Zealand's Chief Transformation and Alliances Officer Mike Williams told Aviation Week Network that London remained among the top cities the airline wanted to fly to once it gets more aircraft.

The airline previously flew to London Heathrow (LHR) via Los Angeles (LAX) but axed those flights, saying they were commercially unsustainable, especially the Los Angeles – London leg. While there are plenty of one-stop options between New Zealand and the United Kingdom, no airline does a through flight with the same aircraft and flight number.

Air New Zealand is expecting two new B787-9s next year – the first of five on order (it also has three slightly larger B787-10s on order). To date, Air New Zealand's fourteen B787-9s have been hampered by engine issues, specifically, possible corrosion-related fatigue cracking of the engine turbine blades, requiring the planes to go out of service for a lengthy engine inspection and overhaul.

Four Air New Zealand B787s are currently out of service, causing the airline all sorts of headaches.

This problem isn't specific to Air New Zealand – it is a problem for airlines worldwide that operate B787s with Rolls Royce Trent 1000 engines. Those problems are expected to continue for a while yet. But the new aircraft will be fitted with trouble-free General Electric GEnx engines.

The first of the new B787s will be deployed onto the existing flagship Auckland (AKL) – New York (JFK) flights. But London is looking likely after that.

The future London flights will use Gatwick (LGW) rather than Heathrow. Air New Zealand was allocated slots at Gatwick to use this Southern Hemisphere winter but because of a lack of aircraft, could not take them up. However, the airline is well-positioned to regain those slots when required.

Air New Zealand expects all eight new B787s by the end of 2028, although Boeing's delivery schedules are notoriously unreliable. However, the airline thinks it will have enough spare aircraft to return to London around the end of 2026 or the start of 2027.

No aircraft can do Auckland – London in a single flight, so it will have to stop to refuel somewhere. The current options under consideration are Los Angeles or Singapore (SIN).

Air New Zealand also wants to use the extra capacity from the new aircraft (and existing aircraft that return to service) to resume flights to Chicago (ORD) and also launch services to Delhi (DEL).

Photo: Los Angeles World Airports