All aboard flight NZ1 to London

Sad news today with the announcement by Air New Zealand that the Los Angeles to London leg of the famous Auckland to London route will cease in October 2020. The service was first introduced in 1982 using 747s and 38 years is an eternity in the cutthroat world of air travel: in fact it's a seismic change for Air New Zealand and the many thousands of New Zealanders and UK citizens with ties in both countries.

While a new 787 direct service from Auckland to Newark New Jersey (EWR) for New York will get New Zealanders most of the way to the UK, there's a great sense of tradition in being able to travel all the way from Auckland to Heathrow on New Zealand-crewed airliners. The LAX to LHR leg was also special because it afforded marvelous views of Greenland as the aircraft skirts near the polar regions on its way to the UK. And from a cultural perspective, it was always cheering to see a ZK-registered Air New Zealand aircraft banking over the grey London skies on approach to Heathrow, and know that in a pinch you could be back in New Zealand in a little over 24 hours.

The airline sees greater growth potential in the North American market, which ties in quite nicely with the Prime Minister's recent entente cordiale with the Late Show's Stephen Colbert. And as Air New Zealand places greater emphasis on the capabilities of its Dreamliner fleet, long-range direct services like Auckland to Newark become more feasible. It does beg the question, however: can the airline sustain direct services to seven North American cities? Are there sufficient passengers to and from Honolulu, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Vancouver, Houston, Chicago and New York to make these services viable?

Air New Zealand aircraft at LAX, 18 November 2009

One can speculate why Air New Zealand has finally pulled the plug on its UK presence after nearly four decades. The London to Los Angeles service is clearly well regarded, and the services are usually full, so presumably the seat revenue is insufficiently high to justify the running costs. Perhaps the legendarily high landing costs at Heathrow are up for renegotiation or have been traded to another airline? And perhaps the negative impact on passenger experience of having to transit through the famously unwelcoming LAX has eroded the viability of the service too. Certainly the two-hour dash through a pointless US border check that seems unwilling to acknowledge the existence of transit passengers makes the stopover stressful and tiring, in the midst of an already wearisome double-longhaul journey.

Jetsetting New Zealanders and expats will adjust their travel patterns as they always do, and will take this retreat by Air New Zealand in their stride. Personally, I've not flown all the way to London on Air New Zealand for around five years, chiefly to avoid the grim LAX experience. I also discovered that the return leg from Singapore to Auckland is around 90 minutes shorter than the equivalent leg from LAX to Auckland, which is an eternity when you're trapped in economy class for a full day. But it still seems a great pity that Air New Zealand is abandoning the UK market after such a long history of service, which has started and ended so many tales of intercontinental adventure over the years.