Air New Zealand celebrates 40 years of Auckland-Los Angeles direct

Air New Zealand is marking the 40th anniversary of its direct service between Auckland and Los Angeles, making it the longest-serving airline on the non-stop route. On April 1, 1984, an Air NZ Boeing 747 departed the City of Sails and flew non-stop to the City of Angels for the first time - since then, the carrier has flown daily services aside from when they were suspended amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Previously, the airline had flown to Los Angeles with stopovers in either Nadi, Tahiti, or Honolulu, first landing in the Californian city in 1965. In the four decades since that first non-stop service, Air NZ said it's operated more than 40,000 direct flights carrying more than 12m passengers on the route. Among the most notable of those passengers was Queen Elizabeth II in 1995 and a Sumatran tiger on its way to Auckland Zoo in 2022. Air NZ is not the only airline to operate the popular trans-Pacific service. Over the peak summer period of late 2023 through early 2024 four airlines were flying it daily, with Aotearoa's national carrier facing competition from all three of the major US airlines: United, Delta and American.<br/>