Jetstar’s new NZ destinations revealed

Jetstar announced it would expand its New Zealand operations with four new regional destinations – Napier, New Plymouth and Palmerston North in the North Island, and Nelson in the South Island – from December.

Jetstar’s chief executive for Australia and New Zealand, David Hall, said the company was delivering on its commitment to bring low fares and increased competition to communities around the country, kicking off with a special $9 one-way launch fares.

Jetstar launched the flights, starting from December and February, with discounted $NZ9 ($8.14) fares, which caused its website to crash under the heavy demand.

It will use five 50-seat Bombardier Q300 turboprops on the new routes.

Jetstar said its expansion into regional NZ would add about 670,000 extra seats into the local market, on top of its 2.6 million seats flown by its fleet of nine Airbus A320 jets.

“The beauty of it for us is that we’ve had a series of airlines competing against Air New Zealand coming into Hawke’s Bay over the years”.

Tauranga may have missed out on hosting Jetstar flights in and out of the city, but Transport Minister Simon Bridges says he isn’t giving up hope that they’ll reconsider in the future.

The airline has a 17 per cent share of the New Zealand domestic airline market, which is dominated by Air New Zealand. There will now be pressure on Air New Zealand and United to look for synergies (or more) while the small position of Virgin Australia and Delta will surely be squeezed. “We are also the gateway to some of New Zealand’s biggest tourist attractions”.

JETSTAR’S new flight destinations have sparked a price war.

This is a great initiative and comes with the suggestion that more regional services are to follow, says Mr Kelly. Forsyth Barr analyst Andy Bowley said the carrier was likely targeting a revenue objective of up to $NZ60 million, which represents around 4 per cent of Air NZ’s domestic revenue base.

Bridges said the announcement was one of a number of new global and regional air services announced in recent months.

“We are confident of our ability to stimulate the economy to fill those seats”, chief executive Christopher Luxon said.

“For Rotorua, this means increased capacity, as well as encouraging more travellers to connect via air rather than road to and from Auckland, and a direct link to Queenstown”.