Garcia Knight, who finished fifth in the slopestyle discipline early in the Games scored an impressive 88.75 with his first attempt. He opted to repeat the same move with his second run, but polishing it along the way, and it worked a treat, scoring 97.5 from the judges and landing the best score of the day.
The Christchurch athlete produced four and a half spins on his first attempt and the judges clearly took a shine to his second leap.
Garcia Knight (20) needed to finish in the top six of his group, with the best six in each of the two groups advancing. He had managed that with ease and will go into Saturday's final among the most fancied to make the podium.
Garcia Knight's success follows on from fellow Kiwi Zoi Sadowski-Synnott qualified fifth best in her Big Air qualification series.
Sadowski-Synnott was set to contest the final on Friday but bad weather has been forecast for that day at the venue, so the women's Big Air has been brought forward a day.
The final, which has three runs to produce a winning score, will start at 1.30pm (NZT) tomorrow.
That will precede the men's freeski halfpipe final, in which three New Zealanders made the top 12 to go for medals.
Byron Wells qualified fourth best, and brother Beau-James fifth, with 16-year-old Nico Porteous squeezing into the final by finishing 11th.
