Qantas has announced two new services out of Auckland alongside the imminent opening of a new lounge at the city’s airport as a trans-Tasman rivalry with Air New Zealand heats up.<\/p>\n
The Australian airline will launch new routes to Samoa and the Gold Coast from mid-2026. Both services will operate three times a week and will begin from June 16, with tickets going on sale today.<\/p>\n
Qantas International and Freight chief executive Cam Wallace said Auckland was one of the airline’s most important international hubs.<\/p>\n
“These announcements show the scale of investment and growth we’re making in New Zealand,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Combined with our new Auckland lounge soon to open and this weekend’s launch of flights to Perth, we’re giving Kiwi travellers more choice and premium experiences than ever before.”<\/p>\n
The airline’s inaugural Auckland to Perth service took off on Sunday and Qantas’ new international lounge at Auckland Airport will open on December 17.<\/p>\n
It will be the first time Air New Zealand faces competition on the route to Apia since Samoa Airways stopped flying it in 2022.<\/p>\n
Air New Zealand and Jetstar currently operate services between Auckland and Gold Coast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Qantas has announced two new services out of Auckland alongside the imminent opening of a new lounge at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":173261,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[15656,51,85,42,43,6430,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-173260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-air-travel","tag-auckland","tag-australia","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-pacific-islands","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173260\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/173261"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}