Air New Zealand’s
Final Frontier

Air NZ chief flight operations and safety officer David Morgan says the relaunched service — this time into JFK Airport instead of Newark across the Hudson River as originally planned — is one of the highlights of his 37-year career at the airline.

He plans to be one of the four-strong pilot crew flying into what he describes as an iconic airport in a global powerhouse city.

“It’ll be an operational challenge. Like Chicago [where the airline started flying in 2018] it’s an ultra-long range operation and we’ve had to consider the implications of that, particularly as we’re getting into busy airspace and particularly in winter where’s there some challenging operational conditions.”

The airline has also flown Dreamliners out of Boeing’s Charleston plant, not too far south of New York, so it is familiar with operating over that route.

But as with any ultra-long range (ULR) operation, the main consideration is weight on the plane. No matter how advanced the technology is in the lightweight carbon fibre 787s and how efficient the engines are, the physics of flight are unavoidable, especially into a headwind.

“It’s the old story — as soon as you start putting weight on to the aeroplane, you reduce the range of the aircraft. And so the amount of weight that we can lift off the runway is defined by the length of the flight on the day.”

While Air New Zealand’s aircraft configured for the trip has 275 seats, depending on weather, as many as 50 to 60 of those seats may not be sold for the return trip.

“There will be very little cargo payload on these flights, we’ll optimise the flights for passenger revenue and the cargo revenue will be pretty much on the day what we can fit onto the aeroplane — if any.”

Chicago operations, suspended since the pandemic but being reinstated this year, had provided an invaluable operational guide.

There are a string of big alternative airports across the US mainland on the New York route should flights have to divert, several with an Air New Zealand presence. Across the Pacific, Honolulu, Rarotonga and Nadi could be stops, and in this country Ohakea and Christchurch are alternatives to Auckland.

The New York flight is so long that if need be, new crew could be flown to an alternative airport and a stopover would be a “gas and go” operation. Morgan says it’s a bit like a Formula 1 pit stop, with the length of time on the ground dictated by how quickly fuel can be pumped into the plane.

“The trick here is to know you’re going to do it. So if you know you’re going to do it 12 hours ahead then you tell the airport, you tell the fuelling company and the system that an aeroplane is going to arrive at a certain time, everybody is ready.”

Chicago operated for about 15 months, and flights out of there went smoothly although one had to be cancelled when a Polar vortex snow storm hit and no aircraft could be refuelled.

Summer’s big thunderstorms over the continental US are less of a threat, with air traffic controllers expert at re-routing planes around them.

Like Chicago, Morgan expects extra pilots and cabin crew will be stationed in New York if flights are delayed by weather.

JFK is one of the busiest airports in the US, in April handling more than 1000 flights a day as traffic rebuilds quickly from pandemic lows. But he says that with four runways compared to Chicago’s eight, it is an easier airport to operate in, though the other big airports nearby mean the airspace is busy.

“There’s a lot of a lot of aircraft operating in the area and we’ve got to be ready for that.”

While other parts of the airline are struggling for staff, Morgan says there are enough Boeing 787 crew and those flying the route will now undergo intensive simulator training.

Last month Morgan met Federal Aviation Administration officials, including those in air traffic control to get more information on how traffic flows. “We don’t want to necessarily do short approaches and that sort of thing. So I’ll have a chat with the FAA to say ‘we’re going to be doing one of the longest flights in the world. We want to make sure we get it right’.”

In New Zealand, the Civil Aviation Authority has to approve any new destination.

“In this case Air New Zealand must be able to provide evidence that the flight can be carried out safely,” says a spokesperson. “Safely, in a case like operations to New York, involves many different aspects including: aircraft suitability for the route, engineering assessments, navigational capability, communications requirements, air traffic control, contingency planning, briefings and aerodrome assessments, training for operational personnel, crew rest requirements, flight planning and meteorology.”

The Chicago flight time is about an hour less than New York, but that route has provided insights into fatigue management, Morgan says.

“The biggest issue for us is managing fatigue because that is a threat to safety. And so therefore we make sure everyone is fit both prior to flight and also when they arrive at the destination,” he says.

“We have a fatigue working group that works with flight operations and the pilot union representatives. They’re working at the moment on what the crew composition will be, what the rest system will be prior to departure out of Auckland, but also on the ground while they’re in New York.” The group is working with Massey University’s Sleep/Wake Research Centre as it did before the Chicago flights .

Air Line Pilots’ Association (Alpa) president Andrew Ridling agrees fatigue is the big issue and says the flight will initially be operated by two captains and two first officers so they can be run as separate crews where one may handle takeoff and the other may land the plane.

The Chicago flight shifts had ranged from three to five hours and during rest periods pilots have bunks above the flight deck. “It’s better than a business class seat and there’s a chair up there to use as well.”

Unlike some airlines, the crew aren’t provided with different meals to avoid the danger of food poisoning, but Ridling says there’s high confidence in the quality of meals on offer.

He’s a Dreamliner captain, has flown the Chicago route and says air traffic controllers in the US are among the world’s best. At O’Hare Airport the chatter from the tower is near-constant and pilots aren’t expected to say much themselves. He’s expecting the same in New York.

Ridling says Dreamliners have extremely long legs. The aircraft have enormous fuel tanks and their fuel capacity can be increased for ULR flights such as New York. “The 787 is quite capable of doing it — it’s just a matter of how many people you put on board,” says Ridling.

The aircraft he was flying this month in current settings could carry about 120,000 litres of fuel.

He’s keen to fly to the Big Apple himself, but says not all pilots enjoy ULR flying.

“We’re all different, I suppose. There’s certainly enough people vying to do it.”

Boeing says that although the listed maximum range of the 787-9 is 7,565 nautical miles (14,010 km), some airlines have been able to safely operate the aircraft beyond that. For example, Qantas has operated both the Perth-London (7830 nm) and Brisbane-Chicago (7730 nm) routes, while Air Tahiti flew the 787 between Tahiti-Paris with a range of over 8500 nm.

Airplane configurations, including the number of seats, the weight of the seats, the number galleys and amount of catering for passengers, all impact the range capability of aircraft and all are customised to meet the needs of the airline for their passengers.

''Additionally, leveraging various operational procedures designed to minimize fuel consumption and increase range capability are ways that airlines can extend the range of the airplane,'' Boeing told the Herald.

While the Dreamliners are extremely fuel-efficient compared to the aircraft they replaced, an International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) carbon calculator estimates total emissions for the aircraft at 82 tonnes each leg, amounting to 651kg for an economy-class passenger and double that for those in business class.

Air New Zealand’s head of network strategy, Andrew Skilling, works on partnerships and with the team that picks routes.

“We determine who we partner with, what network we fly. We generally use a market selection framework to really think about not only what makes a good route work, but also what are Air New Zealand’s strengths and what markets we have won in the past.”

The New York flight is an example of the airline’s decade-old Pacific Rim strategy being taken to its limit. Out went Hong Kong-London and LA-London and instead Air NZ has concentrated on flights it can do in a single leap.

“There’s ongoing reviews of the longhaul network because of its inherent lower levels of profitability compared to domestic,” says Skilling. A daily longhaul service involves investment of about $200 million of capital plus running costs.

There have been several iterations of its strategy into North America — its most profitable longhaul route group — with the emphasis on pushing further east.

“It’s a very mature market and we’re increasingly seeing the benefits of breadth in that market — rather than flying three times a day to LA and connecting a whole bunch of traffic beyond there, we’re flying new point-to-point destinations in North America “

First Vancouver, then Houston stretched capability but those routes’ successful execution gave Air New Zealand the confidence to fly to Chicago and now New York.

“And New York isn’t quite on the Pacific Rim, but the true definition of that strategy is really anything within reach of a direct flight of an Air NZ aircraft,” says Skilling.

Before the 2019 launch, and during most of the past two years, teams across the airline including networks, fleet, flight planning and sales, have been working on the critical question — how to maximise the return on a route like New York.

“It’s going to be payload constrained so it’s right at the edge of the performance capability of the aircraft. So how do we make sure that we can squeeze every bit of juice out of the lemon?”

To lighten the load on the way back to New Zealand, passengers could be re-routed through the airline’s other gateways.

It is also working with Boeing on tweaks such as software upgrades that can allow the plane to fly further and other modifications to allow a greater takeoff weight. The plane maker works with regulators to get those changes approved.

“On the fuel there’s a software tweak that we can make which will allow us to fill the tank more, which is something that we don’t have today.”

By analysing 10 years of weather history with Boeing, the airline now has a decade worth of different flight tracks and a deep understanding of seasonal variation and performance.

“And so when we sell seats on board the aircraft in advance, we’re not going to oversell, we’re going to make sure we sell a level that we feel comfortable where we can carry every single passenger.”

Initially, over the first northern winter the airline would err on the side of caution until it had full confidence in its operation.

Skilling says it applied a “Monte Carlo style” approach to evaluating Houston and Chicago, with the odds or probability of assessing operating conditions on any given day turning out to be quite accurate.

But there will always be curve balls. “If in the worst-case scenario, we need to contact people and say, ‘we’re just one or two seats shy of what we need’ and reroute those people the day before rather than on the day and have them turn up.”

Skilling says that before Covid, New York was a five-times-a week route. The pandemic had forced a rethink, but with a market bigger than Australia, the airline is confident it can expand frequency with the aim of reaching daily flights, as it aims for on all longhaul routes.

“It’s going to be one of the wealthiest markets we serve. Pre-Covid we had seen quite a lot of growth at premium leisure and we would anticipate that would continue out of New York.”

While the pandemic put the brakes on Air New Zealand’s New York plans, it has also led to other airlines pulling out of or back from that market. And late last year that created an opening for the Kiwi carrier to switch from operating out of Newark in New Jersey to JFK in Queens, about 26km from Midtown Manhattan.

Steve Rowe, head of network scheduling and publications, has been involved with the project since 2018 and negotiating slots with the Port Authority of New York, which runs the city’s airports.

“When we launched Newark the last time we had discussions with both airports and just had dialogue around slot availability Both are heavily slot constrained, JFK is actually more slot constrained but has more carriers so it tends to have more movement with airlines coming and going.” This was exacerbated by the pandemic and an opportunity came up that provided better connection times for traffic from Australia (about 20 per cent of Air NZ passengers to the US) and the Pacific Islands, with a 7.40pm departure from Auckland.

“Newark was challenging right from the start years ago and with JFK it suddenly became more apparent that there was going to be more opportunity in a post-Covid world than what there was before.”

More than 70 airlines operate into JFK and Air New Zealand will be using Terminal One, which it will share with other fellow Star Alliance carriers.

Rowe was in New York in March, helping nail down deals with suppliers such as ground handlers and caterers LSG.

The turnaround time will be the airline’s quickest in the US — 90 minutes.

Air New Zealand is also beating Qantas by three years on launching the direct flights, with the Australian carrier’s Sydney-New York Project Sunrise flights not scheduled until 2025.

Rowe says that although JFK is a massive enterprise, a non-stop flight from Australasia has the airport excited. “They have service into every other continent. This was the missing one for a direct flight.”

The economics of longhaul services are always the most precarious of any route but even with payload restrictions, the airline’s chief customer and sales officer Leanne Geraghty is confident it has got its sums right following analysis during the past two years.

“It’s a fairly fine line but we’re very confident that it will be a commercially viable proposition,” she says.

Premium travellers provide the best yield for airlines and are the biggest driver of profitability. “What we’re seeing is actually across all of our North America routes, there’s an increased demand for premium travel,” she says.

“People want to travel point-to-point versus doing transits. There are a number of factors in the new environment that actually play very well into a route such as Auckland-New York.” During a pandemic, some passengers also wanted more personal space.

On the day of announcement, the airline experienced the strongest response for any of its North American route launches over the past five years, with 800 tickets sold.

“There’s very strong demand, and it’s continuing with the loads growing really nicely through to the launch flight and through into October,” says Geraghty. “The demand southbound is going very well also.”

It is expected that about 60 per cent of traffic on the route will be inbound to New Zealand, feeding into another critical part of the airline’s equation — its domestic operation, on which around a fifth of passengers were from overseas pre-pandemic.

Geraghty says US visitors tend to spend more time and money than other visitors once they are here, and go beyond the main gateways. “We’re very well placed with our 20 regional connections out of the main gateways across the country, to get them around and about and spending.”

Economy flights on the new route were launched at just under $1000 one-way and she doesn’t expect to see them come down much.

“At this stage we don’t intend to put tactical offers out to New York. We think it is very fair and reasonable for the service and the destination and what we’re offering.”

The airline is finalising new food and beverages available, and will revamp inflight entertainment and modify service delivery on the flight. There will also be as-yet-unspecified “sleep rituals” on offer.

“We’re incredibly conscious that it is a long flight and the teams are working really hard to make sure that we’re offering a product and a service that keeps our customers comfortable and well rested for their arrival into New York,” she says.

“We are currently talking with some chefs and various other experts to make sure that we get that as right as we possibly can.”

For economy passengers there’ll be 13 Skycouches on the existing aircraft and homeward bound there should be more space to spread out.

Besides new business class seats, the new aircraft could be fitted out with Sky Nests, the bunk-style sleeping pods the airline launched just as the pandemic hit in February 2020.

Forsyth Barr analyst Andy Bowley says the New York flights are challenging because of their range. “The challenge with any ultra-longhaul destination is that you have to burn a lot of fuel to carry enough fuel for the final few hours of the flight. Your unit cost for that sort of flight starts to go up instead of down.”

The airline is heading towards an $800m full-year pre-tax loss and has a cautious approach to expansion, leading to the strong emphasis on domestic operations.

New York fits that strategy — not wanting to grow at the expense of return on capital.

“The business case for New York clearly must stack up with regards to where yields must get to and demand for the premium end of the cabin,” says Bowley. “The direct flight to New York clearly provides the basis for yields.”

The airline wants to get to daily flights within 12 to 18 months, he says.

Fatigue is as big an issue for flight attendants as it is for pilots. They’re the proxy for airline captains in the cabin and talks have been going on to finalise agreements for ULR flying between the airline and crew unions E tū and the smaller breakaway Flight Attendants’ Association of NZ.

E tū says negotiations during the past year have been difficult and resulted in the month-long strike by onboard crew leaders to focus attention on the pay and conditions of the re-hired crew.

Central to the negotiations was base pay, which hadn’t increased since 2018, and the pay and conditions for crew expected to fly ultra-long flights to New York and Chicago.

After protracted negotiations, the union signed a settlement on May 27, which needed to be ratified by members.

The deal includes better base pay for crew than was originally offered, and an increase in the extended duty and ULR payments for the longer and ultra-long duties, as well as increases to allowances, says E tū head of aviation, Savage.

The union's central goal was to get the base rate above the minimum wage and at least equal to the Living Wage of $49,190 a year, he says.

''Our biggest concern with New York duties is fatigue mitigation, as the crew could find themselves working for up to 22 hours if flights are delayed. We still don’t have certainty about onboard rest facilities, the amount of pre-duty and post-duty rest, and the amount of rest crew will get in New York before having to fly home again,'' says Savage.

At this stage there will only be two nights and one day rest for crew.
''We prefer crew to have a guarantee of at least two full days of rest and will be pursuing this via the airline’s Fatigue Risk Management Forum.''

Last month Flight Attendants’ Association president Craig Featherby said while conditions relating to fatigue were still being discussed but around 215 of its 268 members had agreed to fly ULR routes over 16 hours — Chicago and New York.

“The general view of the membership is this is quite exciting. Of course, everything comes back to safety and risk assessments that have to be completed first. We’re currently working with the business on several different programmes at the moment.”

The association was formed in 2020 following a wave of redundancies which shrank the airline by about a third.

“We need the business as much as what they need us. Our members want to fly to New York and they want fair, reasonable conditions and at the forefront of everything is safety.”

Featherby is a flight service manager and will be working on ULR flights among nine or 10 other cabin crew.

He says data from the Massey Sleep/Wake Centre is being compared to study results from other airlines which did long-range flights, including South African Airways.

Cabin crew are likely to take a short rest break and then two longer periods of deeper rest where they can sleep during the flight.

While other airlines were flying further, for Air New Zealand New York is a huge undertaking, Featherby says. “For the cabin crew it’s just exciting to think that finally, we can link up with the rest of the world. We’re a little country now connecting to the Big Apple — that’s pretty amazing.”