Air New Zealand launches 17-hour flight to New York City

(CNN) – For the first time in its history, Air New Zealand offers direct flights between Auckland and New York City.

Flights from Oakland will operate as NZ2 and flights from New York JFK will be numbered NZ1. These numbers just symbolize how important the new route is for Air New Zealand (ANZ).

“Traditionally, flight numbers 1 and 2 are used on an airline’s main route. And that’s what New York will be – our main route,” Greg Foran, the airline’s chief executive, said in a statement.

Each station will operate three times a week on board the Boeing 787 Dreamliners. Tickets are already on sale on the ANZ website.

Travelers from New Zealand will leave Auckland Airport (AKL) at 7:40 pm, then spend 16 hours on the plane before finally arriving at JFK. It will record flights departing from JFK to Auckland in 17 hours 35 minutes, thus adding it to the list of the longest flights in the world.

“We have worked very hard over the past few years to make this very long service a reality,” added Foran. “To ensure customers arrive in New York feeling refreshed, we put a lot of thought into the onboard experience and teams are working around the clock to make sure this is a great flying experience.”

Also in contention over one of the world’s longest routes is the flight from Perth in Western Australia to London on Qantas. And it resumes at the end of March after a pause linked to the epidemic.

The pandemic has been responsible for many aviation-related records.

That flight usually included a layover in Los Angeles, but travel restrictions made that impossible and caused the airline to push through the entire trip without risking a layover.

Air New Zealand already operates several flight routes between its home country and the United States — head to Chicago, Honolulu, Houston, Los Angeles and San Francisco — as well as one route to Vancouver just north of the border in British Columbia, Canada.