Air New Zealand to park Boeing 777s through late 3Q21

Air New Zealand (NZ, Auckland Int’l) will keep all 15 of its B777s grounded through at least September 2021, with the widebodies now parked indefinitely. “We are not anticipating a return to any B777 flying until September 2021 at the earliest, which is why we have made the decision to ground the fleet until at least this time next year,” Chief Operating Officer Carrie Hurihanganui said, underlining that the pace of market recovery is slowed then originally hoped for. The New Zealand carrier announced earlier this year that it would park its eight B777-200(ER)s “for the foreseeable future”, forcing an impairment charge of NZD338 million New Zealand dollars (USD225.7 million). However, it has so far refrained from explicitly grounding its seven B777-300(ER)s, although in practice they have all already been retired from limited operations over the course of July and August. According to Flightradar24 ADS-B data, the last flight of Air New Zealand’s B777-300(ER)s to date was NZ1005 from Los Angeles Int’l to Auckland Int’l, operated by ZK-OKO (msn 38407) on August 20, 2020. “Four of Air New Zealand’s B777-300(ER) aircraft will be stored in Victorville in the Californian desert, while the remaining three will stay in Auckland where they are able to be returned to service if required. The airline’s B777-200(ER) aircraft will be sent to long-term storage facilities in both Roswell, New Mexico and Victorville, California from later this month,” the carrier said in a statement. For the time being, all eight -200(ER)s remain in New Zealand. Five are parked at Auckland airport and three at Christchurch airport. Out of the seven -300(ER)s, three are already in storage at Victorville, while the remainder is still in Auckland.