As tipped by the Herald the airline will start the 14,200km flight to New York with a Boeing787-9 Dreamliner aircraft already in its fleet from October 2020 in a move that will steal the march on its competition in this part of the world to fly non-stop to the east coast of the United States.
But it's a case of give and take and there are jobs on the line.
The withdrawal from London planned for next October means 130 London cabin crew jobs go and 25 sales and ground staff roles go.
The decision to quit flying from Los Angeles to London won't have been taken lightly. It's been flying to Heathrow for nearly four decades but it has been an expensive operation to keep in place.
Acting chief executive Jeff McDowall talks of market dynamics having affected performance in recent years.
Less than seven per cent of all airline travellers between Auckland and London chose to fly via Los Angeles last year.
New Zealanders now have a lot of other ways to get to England's capital. Around 40 per cent of travellers to and from this country fly through the Middle East to Europe via Dubai and Doha on Emirates and Qatar and that's hurt Air New Zealand's gateway service into Europe.
Those airlines offer dozens of European gateways via their Middle Eastern hubs.
Mainland Chinese carriers also offer flights through to Europe, often at cut-rate prices.
And less harmful to Air New Zealand are the Singapore Airlines and Cathay Pacific services into Europe which also take large numbers of inbound and outbound traffic. These don't hurt as Air New Zealand is in joint ventures with these airlines.
The airline has been frustrated for years about how customers have been delayed flying though LAX and there is more transatlantic competition, including a growing number of budget carriers.
Air New Zealand ditched its Hong Kong-London service six years ago and the decision on the Los Angeles flight is based on the same rationale - it won't fly loss-making routes.
The New York service is also part of its focus on the Pacific Rim.
Air NZ has announced flights from Auckland to New York. Photo / File
"Air New Zealand is strongest when operating direct flights to and from our home base and this reset will put us in the best possible position to take advantage of increasing demand across the Pacific Rim,'' says McDowall.
Air New Zealand will fly between Auckland and its alliance partner United Airlines' New York hub Newark Liberty International Airport three times weekly, year-round, using its latest configuration Boeing 787-9 aircraft.
At the weekend Qantas trialled a New York-Sydney service. The experiment was hailed as a success.
But that plane had only 49 people on board. Air New Zealand will fly a premium heavy plane with nearly six times that number on scheduled service and some of those will be Aussies, at least until Qantas makes the call to fly to The Big Apple.
Air New Zealand prides itself on being nimble - ditching a prestige route in favour of one with more growth potential is evidence of this.
