On sale until midnight July 24, the tickets must be used during five travel periods between September 2024 and February 2025.
The three most expensive routes, starting at $99 each way, are Auckland to Queenstown, Dunedin, and Invercargill.
Today, Jetstar launched a sale 24 hours later, releasing 15,000 discounted one-way fares.
The sale runs until midnight on Monday, July 22. Like Air New Zealand, Jetstar travellers must travel during specific periods, which vary by route but run from August 2024 to mid-June 2025.
The sale includes several routes between major New Zealand cities and Australia or Pacific destinations such as Auckland to Sydney from $135, Wellington to Gold Coast from $159 or Auckland to Rarotonga from $169.
Return flights are not included in the sale. For example, travellers can purchase a September flight from Auckland to Gold Coast for $169 and a return flight one week later for $262.
Discounted fares will likely be appreciated by travellers, who are paying three times as much for flights compared to 2019 and 2021, according to Consumer NZ.
The consumer watchdog recently compared fares from 11 Air New Zealand flights from 2019 to 2021 with equivalent flights in 2023 and 2024. One flight had dropped in price but the rest were more expensive, with prices up 34% to 297%.
It wasn’t great news for those who must fly domestically and could be reassuring for those who had suspected prices were higher than before.
“It’s no surprise that New Zealand consumers are questioning how and why flight prices have increased so much over the past few years”.
The airline addressed the increased domestic prices in May during the country’s largest international tourism business event, Trenz.
Air New Zealand chief executive Greg Foran said the airline was in “a challenging environment” regarding costs and did not expect airfares to drop on their own.
The consumer analysis explored a “range of scenarios” and original booking details were mimicked as closely as possible regarding lead-in time, flight time, days abroad and baggage.
In 2021, a return flight to Hamilton for two adults and no luggage, booked two days beforehand, cost $281.20. Fast forward three years and the same flight was $1118.00.
An international flight from Sydney to Palmerston North booked two days before flying for a family of four cost $1372 in March 2020. Today, the price is more than double, at $3451.
Flights made a month in advance were still twice (or in one case, three times) more expensive now compared to 2019 and 2020.
When asked about the increase, Air New Zealand General Manager Domestic Scott Carr said the comparisons were “extremely disappointing” and “misleading”.
“The small sample of fares they have used reflects two very different operating environments. In 2020 and 2021 there was a global pandemic, the borders were closed, and at times there was restricted domestic travel,” he said.
Carr said domestic fares increased by 20% from 2020 to 2024 and during that time the airline has faced rising costs from suppliers of over 40%. In the last year, domestic airfares decreased by 4% according to Statistics NZ, Carr added.
Consumer NZ’s Damen said people often contacted them feeling frustrated by the cost of flights as well as cancellations.
Foran recently told Kerre Woodham on Newstalk ZB that although the airline’s cancellation rates were falling, there was work to do regarding delays.
The cancellation rate was at 3.2% of all flights and punctuality was improving, he said.
