Extra winter transtasman flight from Queenstown

Eleven days after suspending transtasman winter flights from Dunedin to Sydney, Air New Zealand has announced an extra weekly Brisbane-Queenstown flight for the height of the resort's winter season.

The increased Queenstown service boosts the number of weekly direct transtasman flights to 10, providing more than 1500 seats per week during the winter high season of July and August.

Destination Queenstown general manager of marketing Graham Budd welcomed the announcement, saying the tourism promoter's focus this year was to encourage more Australian visitors to visit the resort.

"Queenstown as an international and exotic winter destination has huge appeal for Australians," he said in a statement.

More Australians are taking advantage of additional flights to visit Queenstown, according to Queenstown Airport Corporation traffic figures for the six months to December.

These showed international passenger numbers grew 18.6% to 51,675, compared with the same period a year earlier, boosted by a 21% rise in flights from Australia's east coast.

Air New Zealand's suspension of the Dunedin-Sydney service from April, because of soft demand and oversupply of transtasman capacity, was reported to be likely to have a severe impact on Dunedin International Airport, its chairman said at the time. The new Air New Zealand flight, NZ834, will depart from Brisbane on Mondays at 8.50am during July and August, arriving in Queenstown at 2.20pm.

 

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