Air New Zealand and Qantas will restart flights from New York City to Sydney

Qantas will resume flying from New York City to Sydney next year, stopping in New Zealand on its way down under.

The carrier will restart flights from the Big Apple — it’s first from the East Coast of the United States since the pandemic started — on June 14, 2023, according to the airline. The route will initially be operated three days each week on a Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft.

The flight, which will stop in Auckland, New Zealand, before making its way onto Sydney, will mark the return of a route that was put on pause for three years due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We’re back flying to most of our pre-COVID destinations, which is a fantastic achievement by our teams and so important for Australians reconnecting with the rest of the world,” Qantas Group CEO Alan Joyce said in a statement. “We can’t wait to return to New York and it’s made possible by the delivery of new aircraft, which have been caught up in delays that have impacted lots of airlines.”

Qantas currently operates six daily flights to Auckland from Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne, and will increase that to 11 in June 2023. The flight from Auckland to New York will take about 16 hours.

The route announcement comes just weeks before Air New Zealand is set to launch its own direct flights from New York to Auckland in September 2022, starting its first-ever direct flights from the East Coast to New Zealand. The flying time from New York to Auckland will clock in at 17 hours and 35 minutes.

The new Qantas flights will offer a more convenient way to access Australia, but it’s a far cry from the company’s Project Sunrise flights, a pre-pandemic experiment testing ultra-long haul non-stop flights between New York and London, and Sydney. The company hopes to resume that test in the coming years.

Currently, Qantas flies non-stop from Australia to Los Angeles, Dallas, and Honolulu, and has plans to add flights to San Francisco later in 2022, according to the airline.

By Alison Fox, a contributing writer for Travel + Leisure