Air New Zealand from Australia | Auckland, the Pacific and the Skycouch
Air New Zealand is the airline Australians use to get to New Zealand and almost never think about for anything else. That is a missed trick, because its Auckland hub turns the worst flight most of us take into two manageable ones, and its cheapest cabin has an idea in it that nobody else copied.
The airline next door, used badly
Australians book Air New Zealand to go to New Zealand and then stop thinking about it.
That is understandable and it wastes the two most interesting things about the airline: an idea in economy class that nobody else has copied properly, and a hub that solves the hardest flight most of us take.
Both are worth a paragraph, and neither will ever be sold to you by a search box. Ask us to price Air New Zealand.
The Skycouch is the best idea in economy in twenty years
Here is what it is, because the name explains nothing.
A row of three economy seats where the footrests raise up to meet the seat in front, turning the entire row into a flat, padded platform. You buy the row as a unit rather than a seat.
Who it is for, honestly:
A couple who want to lie down. Two people buy the three-seat row between them, and for a fraction of what two business class seats cost, you can both actually lie flat. It is not a flat bed and nobody should pretend it is. It is also not a night spent upright, which is the alternative you were comparing it to.
A family with a small child. This is the use case that changes lives. A toddler who can lie down and sleep is a toddler who is not standing on your tray table for eleven hours. Bassinet positions exist on most long-haul aircraft and are limited, so they need booking early; the Skycouch is the answer for the child who has outgrown the bassinet and not yet grown into a seat.
One tall person who wants to stretch out. Expensive per person, but cheaper than the cabin above.
Who it is not for: anyone expecting business class. It is a padded surface in economy. Set the expectation there and it is one of the best-value ideas in aviation. Set it higher and you will be disappointed by a good thing.
Auckland fixes the Pacific
This is the trick most Australians never consider.
Sydney to Los Angeles non-stop is around thirteen and a half hours, and our business class Sydney to Los Angeles page explains why it is one of the harder flights in the network: you cross the date line, you land in the morning of the day you left, and then you have to be a person for the rest of it.
Thirteen and a half hours in one sitting suits people who can sleep on aircraft. If you are not one of those people, no seat and no cabin will fix that. What will fix it is not doing it in one sitting.
Air New Zealand via Auckland splits the Pacific into two flights with a calm, quick, genuinely pleasant hub between them. A shower, a walk, a proper meal, and then the second leg. Two shorter flights produce a better version of you at the far end than one long one ever could, and the fare is frequently competitive because a routing that adds a stop to a route with plenty of non-stops has to earn its passengers somehow.
We put this option in front of every client flying to North America, and roughly a third of them take it once they understand it exists.
New Zealand itself, and the open-jaw rule
If the destination is New Zealand rather than beyond it, one piece of advice matters more than everything else on this page.
Do not fly in and out of the same airport.
New Zealand is long and the good bits are spread along it. Fly into Auckland, drive or fly south, and then fly home from Queenstown or Christchurch. That is an open jaw, and it removes an entire day of backtracking from a ten-day trip, which is a meaningful fraction of the holiday.
Booking sites price open jaws badly when they price them at all, because they are built around a return. It takes us five minutes. It is genuinely the single most useful thing we do on New Zealand itineraries and hardly anyone asks for it.
Our Auckland guide is blunt about the city being a two-day proposition and the country being the point, and the open jaw is how you act on that.
The visa rule that catches families
This is not about the airline and it costs people flights, so it goes here.
Australian citizens do not need a visa or an NZeTA for New Zealand.
Australian permanent residents who are not Australian citizens generally do need an NZeTA arranged before departure, and airlines enforce it at check-in.
This catches families out constantly, particularly when one member holds an Australian passport and another holds an Indian, British or other passport with Australian residency. It is quick and cheap to arrange in advance and an expensive thing to discover at the airport.
If your household's passports are not all the same, check every one of them before you book anything. It is exactly the sort of detail we go through when we quote, and it is why our why use a travel agent guide argues what it argues.
Star Alliance, and the Qantas question
Air New Zealand is in Star Alliance, which connects it to Singapore Airlines, Thai and Air India. Its own programme, Airpoints, is well regarded and unusually straightforward by the standards of frequent flyer schemes.
The honest drawback for Australians is that a great many of us are in the Qantas ecosystem, and Star Alliance does not talk to it. If you hold Qantas status and value it, that is a genuine cost to weigh rather than ignore, and it is why our Cathay Pacific and Malaysia Airlines pages make so much of their Oneworld membership.
If your points live elsewhere, or nowhere, this does not apply to you.
Tell us your programme and number when you request a quote and we will factor it in properly, including telling you when a different carrier is the better buy once the status is counted.
The trans-Tasman, briefly
Three hours, which is roughly a Perth flight with a passport.
On a sector that short, the cabin is close to irrelevant and the schedule is close to everything. A good departure time makes the travel a morning; a bad one makes it a day. Our advice on this route is consistently to spend nothing on the flight and spend the difference on getting the New Zealand itinerary right, which is precisely the opposite of the advice we give on long-haul.
Air New Zealand is competitive here and it is not the only option, and we will say so. What it does have is the network on the other side, which matters the moment your trip goes past Auckland.
Send us your dates and the shape of the trip rather than the flights you think you need, and a consultant will reply within 2 business hours with wholesale fares in Australian dollars, including the open jaw and the Auckland split where they make sense. Get a free Air New Zealand quote.