AIR - Air NZ.

[Jaa]

Air NZ are making their first charter flight to Buenos Aires to take the All Blacks aver to play Argentina. Nice bit of PR to build up the brand and destination before launching a regular commercial service?

With ETOPS 330 Buenos Aires is now within range of their 777s, this is not my area though and will be interested to see what kind of plane they use. I think they could make the route work with 747s as their competitors fly A340s and thus are not going to be at much of a cost disadvantage. Anyone know when Air NZ plan to retire the last of their 747s?

What I would like to see is a service from Auckland to Sao Paulo (GRU) via Buenos Aires. The demand and the money in South America is now unquestionably in Brazil and Sao Paulo city has the population of Australia. With our beaches, laid back lifestyle, and relatively cheap english schools we are a popular destination for Brazilians. Air NZ could also source significant traffic out of Australia via connecting trans-tasman flights for this service.

Not sure if the Argentines would allow such a hop but can't see why not as it would be good for their tourist industry and is the same thing that Aerolinas do, currently stopping at Auckland on their way to Sydney.

One other problem is a potential lack of code share and alliance partners for the route. TAM, a member of the Star Alliance would have been a perfect fit but since the merger with LAN has been announced they have indicated more of a preference for the combined group to join Oneworld which leaves Star Alliance with only Avianca in South America.

Air NZ would be easily be no. 1 on the route with little real competition as Aerolinas is comfortably the worst airline I have ever flown with yet Aerolinas is also regularly full on this route!

[modandm]

Air NZ are making their first charter flight to Buenos Aires to take the All Blacks aver to play Argentina. Nice bit of PR to build up the brand and destination before launching a regular commercial service?

I dont think NZ will want to use the 747 and will be hoping to get ETOPS 330 on the 200ers for the route. The 747's are too big and premium heavy - they are being kept for the SFO route really. The 747 are supposed to be retired in 2014-15 with the 767s. Part of the reason they are being kept is they use the same engines as the 767s. I could be totally wrong and NZ could launch 3 weekly 747's to EZE - but it seems like a big risk with nearly 350 economy and economy+ seats to fill and over 40 business class on a leisure route. The 200er with 26/30/244 is a better suited config and size for the route.

Regarding EZE vs GRU - I think AIR has realised GRU is a bit too far even for the 787. Also with Qantas switching to SCL EZE makes good sense since BA is a popular destination and Aussies will have Qantas 1 stop or NZ 1 stop to BA.

Regarding feed at the EZE end I think NZ could put a strong case to Gol, and with Avianca/TACA + Gol they would have their bases covered. If Gol is not interested then it may be some time before AV Brazil gets large enough. I don't see why Gol would say no - they are skyteam and there is no skyteam carrier in NZ/AUS for them to link with.

[iceman]

Very interesting discussion Jaa and modandm. I desperately wait for Air NZ to start flying this route as I am tired of flying LAN via Santiago every couple of months and I will not fly Aerolineas long haul. Do either of you have any inkling as to when Air NZ would start this service ?

[Jaa]

I dont think NZ will want to use the 747 and will be hoping to get ETOPS 330 on the 200ers for the route. The 747's are too big and premium heavy - they are being kept for the SFO route really. The 747 are supposed to be retired in 2014-15 with the 767s. Part of the reason they are being kept is they use the same engines as the 767s. I could be totally wrong and NZ could launch 3 weekly 747's to EZE - but it seems like a big risk with nearly 350 economy and economy+ seats to fill and over 40 business class on a leisure route. The 200er with 26/30/244 is a better suited config and size for the route.

As a leisure market albeit one with a lot of business growth potential (from Iceman and others!) wouldn't frequency be of less importance to say overall capacity?

Do you know of any other airline flying 777s with ETOPS 330 across open ocean modandm?

Regarding EZE vs GRU - I think AIR has realised GRU is a bit too far even for the 787. Also with Qantas switching to SCL EZE makes good sense since BA is a popular destination and Aussies will have Qantas 1 stop or NZ 1 stop to BA.

I wasn't suggesting they fly direct to GRU, rather make a stopover at EZE on their way to GRU. Brasil is the destination that could provide the premium traffic. Avianca Brasil might be ok for their purposes with maybe another alliance with flypluna.

As for when they might start the route Iceman, I have no special knowledge, can just see the opportunity and am reading the tea leaves.

[Anonymous]

I would have thought that as a leisure market people would tend to go to South America for longer holidays and also probably more than one country. Therefore arriving at SCL, EZE or GRU wouldn't be so much of an issue for the tourists. As a business market I am pretty sure that that Chile would have the most business relations with NZ currently and Brazil would have the most potential. Argentina would be 3rd and slipping further away currently.

I would think it is the same for Australia and is precisely the reason why Qantas have canned direct SYD - EZE flights in favour of SYD -SCL despite being in direct competition with their Lan codeshare flying the same route via AKL.

In saying all this I suspect Air NZ will choose EZE (unfortunately for me).

Wouldn't it be great if the LAN TAM alliance went to Star Alliance instead of Oneworld as impossible as this may be....

[modandm]

As a leisure market albeit one with a lot of business growth potential (from Iceman and others!) wouldn't frequency be of less importance to say overall capacity?

Yes true but exisiting competitors are flying near daily or daily. Your right that 3x747 would be roughly same as 4x777. Just a lot of pressure to sell those seats on those days is all. With the 777 they could be more flexible adding extra weekly flights or removing (and still have 3x a week which is really a minimum requirement).

Maybe Air NZ should just do the 747 2x weekly this year then 4x weekly with 777 next year once ETOPS is sorted

Do you know of any other airline flying 777s with ETOPS 330 across open ocean modandm?

Air NZ is leading the charge on this one Jaa. They were first to fly 180 and 240 etops also.

[Blendy]

Here's an interesting thread of mainly gold/gold elite airnz members complaining about the new upgrade changes and how they will now switch to other airlines instead for long haul....
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/air-n...ades-gone.html

[iceman]

Aerolineas Argentinas is due to join the Star Alliance next year.

Air NZ's 777's would be useless for such a long journey without alternate airports. Thus you really need a 4 engine jet to make it work.

Just received an email from Aerolineas announcing they're joining Sky Team, so time for Air NZ to start a Star Alliance service to South America !!

[Jaa]

Just received an email from Aerolineas announcing they're joining Sky Team, so time for Air NZ to start a Star Alliance service to South America !!

There is a bit of talk about NZ being an air hub between Asia and South America. Singapore to Santiago only 21hrs flying time via Auckland! Guess Singapore Airlines might consider it, they fly to Buenos Aires via Barcelona at the moment but a Star solution would make more sense.

Another small win for Air NZ today with Air Asia X pulling out of Christchurch and Air NZ picking up their booked customers past May.
AirAsia X confirms end to Christchurch services

[modandm]

There is a bit of talk about NZ being an air hub between Asia and South America. Singapore to Santiago only 21hrs flying time via Auckland! Guess Singapore Airlines might consider it, they fly to Buenos Aires via Barcelona at the moment but a Star solution would make more sense.

Another small win for Air NZ today with Air Asia X pulling out of Christchurch and Air NZ picking up their booked customers past May.
AirAsia X confirms end to Christchurch services

Hi Jaa - I think the NZ hub Asia-South America is overplayed by NZ and the media, its about the same time to GRU/EZE via DXB and we all know that NZ can't compete with EK.

NZ is a useful hub for Aussie NZ and maybe Japan, but if you think about connection times it seems NZ can either:

1. connect a service to incoming China/Japan flights by departing late morning from NZ and arriving evening into NZ - makes it hard for Aussies to connect though

2. depart late evening around 10pm as do almost all NZ longhaul international flights - allows good domestic connections and good for Aussies. Arrive early morning to allow onward connections.

Based on history NZ will go with the second option you would think - therefore not a good connection for SA-Asia.

Re AAX - must have been bleeding cash for awhile, Jetstar is losing mega-money too. And yet people call for Jetstar-LAX etc. Consumers just see the fare and have no idea what the costs of providing the service is - call NZ SQ etc a rip off... 800 return to KUL.... fuel alone would cost that