Customer general manager Leeanne Langridge said the airline appreciated this meant some customers would have missed out.
"We would love to be able to bring more Kiwis home to their families, but we're limited by the availability of MIQ spots."
Langridge said Air NZ would continue to work closely with the Government to ensure it could bring as many Kiwis home from Australia as possible.
"Our teams have worked tirelessly to get these managed return flights up and running so we can reconnect Kiwis with their loved ones. We recognise this is a very stressful and emotional time for those customers wishing to return from NSW, and we're doing everything we can to get them home safely as quickly as possible.
"We don't have any further information to provide at this stage," Langridge said.
A Kiwi couple stranded in New South Wales say they are extremely lucky to get a booking for one of the five Air New Zealand flights.
The Queenstown man, who did not want to be named, said within seconds of Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announcing flights from Australia to bring people home, his tech-savvy daughter began trying to book a flight.
He said the message came back "sorry taken" for two of the flights, but his daughter was lucky to secure two tickets on the last flight on August 7. Five minutes later she went back online and found all the flights were sold out.
Air New Zealand today announced five flights from Sydney to Auckland between July 28 and August 7 after Ardern revealed a pause on the entire transtasman bubble for eight weeks.
In NSW, New Zealanders can only fly from Sydney and will have to be in MIQ for 14 days.
The man, aged 70 and retired, said he had been hundreds of miles from the red zone in Sydney for 31 days and could not see the need to go into managed isolation for 14 days.
It would be like having an outbreak of Covid-19 in Kaitaia and closing down Winton in Southland, he said.
In Victoria, travellers must have a negative pre-departure test and must isolated until a negative day 3 test.
Ardern said if demand had not been met, more flights would be revealed.
Quarantine-free travel has been suspended from 11.59pm tonight and the bubble will be closed for at least the next eight weeks.
