Eva Air to suspend AKL from SEP

[David B.]

Stuff.co.nz

Taiwanese airline EVA Air is the first airline to pull the plug on services to New Zealand because of high fuel prices.

The carrier has been flying between Taipei and Auckland for 14 years and presently operates two direct return flights on Wednesday and Friday of each week with Airbus A330-200 aircraft.

It will suspend services from September, sales manager Erik Lee said tonight.

---

It will continue to operate three flights a week into Brisbane but it intends cutting back between 70 and 80 flights a week on its global network following an operational review.

Lee said the suspension of New Zealand services was purely because of the cost of flying here on today's jet fuel prices. Jet fuel was hovering around $US159 a barrel today.

He said the route had been a loss maker for EVA Air for more than a year and that was when fuel was much cheaper

---

There is considerable speculation in the airline industry that two Asian carriers are considering pulling out of direct flights to New Zealand soon and routing instead through Australia to get more seats filled.

Summary:

A) EVA Air to suspend AKL services come SEP
B) The route has been a loss maker for some time
C) The airline intends to maintain a presence in AKL
D) EVA will continue to operate services to BNE (will become sole Oceanic destination)

Cheers

[Rhys Xanthis]

It will be interesting to see what happens with these other two carriers - if they decide to do what EK do and go via Australian port to NZ, it could be a great win for consumers for cheap seats - although as i understand it, seats are already pretty cheap to NZ with EK already...guess a little more compeition never hurt the consumer!

[Michael Morrison]

I think TG is rumoured to be the other carrier.

Thought it would probably make more sense for them to just codeshare on the tasman with NZ rather than fly their own metal.

[Grant Smith]

Anyone know if BR are going to revert back to their codeshare with NZ on the AKL-TPE route or did NZ also drop this routing?

BR was probably in trouble the moment they went from seasonal flights betweent TPE-AKL and regular schedules...

[Michael Morrison]

Grant - I believe NZ have dropped TPE