Air New Zealand has announced plans to operate at around 55 percent of its pre-pandemic domestic schedule during July and August.
Since the country moved into COVID-19 alert level 2, the airline has been flying to the majority of the domestic ports, albeit with reduced frequencies.
"We've been encouraged by demand from leisure travellers recently and we're also expecting demand for business travel to continue to build," says Air NZ's general manager of networks Scott Carr.
The new schedule also brings the return of the airline's Invercargill-Auckland A320 jet service which will operate four return services a week.
Air NZ will also reintroduce its Invercargill-Wellington, Christchurch-Rotorua and Christchurch-New Plymouth routes from the start of July.
The airline's Timaru-Wellington and Taupo-Auckland routes resume on Monday.
Some of Air NZ's busiest routes in July and August (flights per-week):
- Auckland-Christchurch: 59
- Auckland-Gisborne: 23
- Auckland-Napier: 36
- Auckland-Wellington: 64
- Auckland-Queenstown: 47
- Wellington-Dunedin: 19
- Wellington-Hamilton: 27
- Wellington-Nelson: 33
- Wellington-Tauranga: 22
- Wellington-Queenstown: 19
- Christchurch-Dunedin: 25
- Christchurch-Invercargill: 20
- Christchurch-Wellington: 66
Operating flights at this frequency would have seemed impossible just weeks ago when Auckland-Wellington flights were reduced to one a day.
