Last week I wrote about United announcing flights between San Francisco and Auckland, New Zealand, as of July 1, 2016. United has been wanting to fly to New Zealand for a long time, though the timing of the announcement was especially interesting. It came just weeks after American announced that they were expanding their partnership…
Continue reading: American Shortly Announcing Flights To Auckland, New Zealand?
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
We think that American will offer better catering and service than Air New Zealand does in business class today.
Very happy to see AA expanding the route network. Bob Crandall has to be well-chuffed.
American Airlines Adds 4th Daily New York – London Service from late-March 2016
http://airlineroute.net/2015/10/12/aa-jfklhr-s16/
This is huge for me as I've been stockpiling my AA miles for several final CX F redemptions. Depending on availability I'll have to reconsider now, as NZ is my favorite place on the planet.
Ben, I flew on United between Sydney and Auckland and from AKL back to the USA in business class using miles way back in January of 1991.
The flight out of AKL was delayed an hour or so and the airport was on high alert. President George Bush, Sr. had just started sending troops to Kuwait to liberate the country from Saddam Hussein/Iraq. To do so with speed, he invoked a clause in a contract the US Government had with Boeing. Apparently, the USG helped finance the Boeing 747. In exchange for doing so, they reserved the right to commandeer all the planes for matters of national security.
United had to take a DC-10 overwater plane out of the Mojave Desert to service the route from Sydney/Auckland; but it could not travel nonstop to LAX and had to refuel in HNL.
The trip was made especially memorable by the uptight flight attendant in business class (no first class on this plane) who (and thankfully before most of business class had boarded) stormed up the aisle, pivoted, and pointed her finger at me and declared menacingly that I looked like her ex-husband. I was 25 years old at the time. And despite it being an overnight flight, I was wearing a business suit with bowtie. I still dress up today for the plane.
So this is a return to the service they had for awhile (although I don't know when they stopped....perhaps 10-15 years ago.)