Air New Zealand to Add 16,000 Seats to Domestic Schedule

(31 Oct 2021) Air New Zealand has confirmed plans to add capacity to its domestic schedule for the busy festive season, upgauging existing A320 services to A321 aircraft from Monday, 7 December until the end of the month.

The airline will upgauge more than 350 flights to larger aircraft this month due to better than expected pre-Christmas and business travel demand.

"We want to make sure Kiwis can get to where they need to be in this busy Christmas period, so we'll be progressively adding around 16,000 new seats for travel in December," said Air New Zealand's Chief Customer and Sales Officer, Leanne Geraghty. "This will see around 80 percent of Auckland-Wellington services and around 25 percent of Auckland-Christchurch services operated by our new and larger A321 aircraft with 214 seats compared to the A320's 171. Customers will also get the bonus of inflight entertainment on these flights.

"Demand in a post-COVID world has been far more variable than pre-COVID, with bookings often being made very late and flights selling out. We've been adding capacity wherever possible which makes more seats available at lower fares. In November we added more than 26,000 seats to the network for travel in the same month, either by adding new flights or deploying larger aircraft on existing routes.

"We are doing what we can to keep Kiwis connected and have so far sold more than 550,000 seats for under $100 for travel between December and February."

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