American Airlines has just announced two very cool new seasonal routes to New Zealand, which complement their existing seasonal flight from Los Angeles to Auckland.
Here are the details of these new routes:
American’s New Dallas to Auckland Route
American Airlines will be launching a new seasonal route from Dallas to Auckland, which will operate between October 25, 2020, and March 25, 2021. The route will operate:
- 3x weekly through November 29, 2020
- Daily starting December 1, 2020
American will operate the route with the following schedule:
Dallas to Auckland departing 10:30PM arriving 7:40AM (+2 days)
Auckland to Dallas departing 11:15AM arriving 7:10AM
American will use a Boeing 787-9 for the 7,440 mile route (which will also be their second longest flight, after Dallas to Hong Kong), featuring a total of 285 seats, including 30 business class seats, 21 premium economy seats, and 234 economy seats.
American Airlines 787-9 business class
Tickets for this new route will be bookable starting November 30, 2019.
This route will complement American’s existing service to Auckland, which operates seasonally from Los Angeles. They’re even extending the season by a few weeks in 2020, as the route will launch as of October 7, rather than at the end of October.
American’s New Los Angeles To Christchurch Route
In addition to a new Dallas to Auckland route, American Airlines will also launch a new seasonal route from Los Angeles to the South Island of New Zealand. American will fly 3x weekly between Los Angeles and Christchurch from October 27, 2020, through March 26, 2021.
The route will operate with the following schedule:
Los Angeles to Christchurch departing 11:30PM arriving 9:25AM (+2 days)
Christchurch to Los Angeles departing 1:10PM arriving 6:00AM
American will use a Boeing 787-8 for the 6,878 mile route, featuring a total of 234 seats, including 20 business class seats, 28 premium economy seats, and 186 economy seats.
American Airlines 787-8
Tickets for this new route will be bookable starting November 9, 2019.
This will be American’s second route from Los Angeles to New Zealand, after their Los Angeles to Auckland route.
Why American Is Adding These Routes Now
We’ve known that American plans on expanding their flying to the South Pacific. That’s because a new joint venture was recently approved between American and Qantas, and as part of that the airlines promised to add additional routes.
Qantas has already announced two new routes — from Brisbane to both Chicago and San Francisco. We’ve known that American would be the next airline to announce new routes.
It is interesting to see that all of the expansion on American’s part so far is seasonal service to New Zealand. That’s no doubt cool for tourists, but I’m surprised to not see more business routes.
I’m curious if we’ll still see American expand from either Dallas or Los Angeles to Brisbane or Melbourne, since those routes seem like possibilities as well.
In about a year we’ll see American operating three routes to New Zealand and just a single route to Australia (from Los Angeles to Sydney), so it seems like they’re leaving most of the Australia flying to Qantas…
Bottom Line
New Zealand is one of the most beautiful countries in the world, and it’s very cool to see American add two new routes there. It’s great to see an airline other than Air New Zealand add a flight to the country from beyond the West Coast, and it’s also cool to see the first flight from the US to the South Island.
Ultimately these are just seasonal routes, though. I’m curious if long term we’ll see some additional year-round capacity to Australia.
What do you make of American’s new routes to New Zealand?
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