In great news for Australians with plans to visit the Big Apple in coming weeks today Qantas has made its eagerly awaited return to New York City. Once previously reached via a dreaded stop over in Los Angeles Qantas will now be running the thrice weekly. Service via Auckland New Zealand in the interim before the airline realises its ultimate Project Sunrise Ambitions to directly connect Australia’s east coast with New York and London.
The new service is unique in that it will essentially be pitting up the Aussie flag carrier with Air New Zealand on its home turf who also operate the route daily with Boeing 787 Dreamliners between Auckland and New York which started last year and who sell connections from many Australian ports.
Qantas CEO Alan Joyce in celebrating the big occasion was noted as remarking “While the world has changed dramatically since the start of COVID, one thing that hasn’t changed is the lure of New York City,”
“Since international borders re-opened, New York has been one of the most popular destinations for our customers who have been connecting on our partners from Qantas flights arriving into Los Angeles and Dallas, so it’s not surprising that we’ve seen very strong demand since our New York flights went on sale.
“The launch of the route has been made possible by the delivery of new 787 aircraft in recent weeks and brings us closer to returning our international capacity to what it was before COVID.”.
“The flights are great news for Australian tourism, helping to bring more visitors from the United States to explore the best of New South Wales and beyond with connections from Sydney across our extensive domestic network,” added Mr Joyce.
“Flying via Auckland makes it easier for travellers from all parts of Australia to access New York, with the choice of 11 daily flights across the Tasman from Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne.
“Offering more room and fewer seats than most of our competitors, the cabins onboard these aircraft have been designed with long-haul travel in mind.”
The route will be operated by Qantas’ Boeing 787 Dreamliner which carry a total of 236 passengers across Business, Premium Economy and Economy cabins in a layout that has been designed to maximise comfort for the longer distances.
- 42 Business suites in a 1-2-1 configuration with a fully-flat bed and direct aisle access.
- 28 Premium Economy seats in a 2-3-2 configuration
- 166 Economy seats in a 3-3-3 configuration
QF 3 will depart Sydney every Sunday, Wednesday and Friday for a roughly 3 hour hop over to New Zealand’s biggest city leaving at 9.30am before arriving at 2.35pm. After a 2 hour layover it is then a late afternoon takeoff out of Auckland at 4.35pm for the 16 hours and 15 minute for the combined trans-pacific and then trans-continental hop over to New York on the Atlantic Coast! The outbound journey in total comes in at approximately 21 hours.
If you thought QF3 through to New York was a marathon think again as the return leg (QF4) which will depart every Sunday, Wednesday and Fridays pushes on almost 23 hours! QF 4 will be wheels up from JFK at 7.30pm in the evening for a whopping 17.5 hour journey across the international date line back to Auckland arriving two days later at 5am. After such a monumentally long flight those bound for Australia will only have 2 hours to recuperate before a 7am departure out of the City of Sails for a 3 hours and 40 minutes flight to Sydney landing at 8.40am.
