J* Auckland to Rarotonga

[Ollie Onion]

So I see that Jetstar has put sale fares online this morning for AKL - RARO flights commencing in the new year. I haven't seen any other announcements about this?

Leaves AKL at 20:40 and arrives back at 06:00, that should be a nice duty

[moa999]

Pattern actually commences in SYD/MEL
Jetstar announces NZ - Rarotonga flights - Business - NZ Herald News

Attractive compared to parking an aircraft in AKL overnight I guess

[Ollie Onion]

I assume they have done the start in SYD / MEL as that circumvents the flying rights to Raro. They can now claim this is an Oz to Cook Islands service that just transits AKL. I do believe NZ crews will be flying the sectors as a continuation of an early Syd / MEL duty.

[Goat Whisperer]

Surely not MEL-AKL-RAR-AKL in a day?? The Tasman crew would have to get off and the second crew would do a red eye Raro return, just like DJ used to.

[framer]

Why not MEL- AKL -RAR then into the hotel for 24 hours? That would be a fairly sweet duty.

[Going Nowhere]

except that the flights only go 3 days a week

[cavemanzk]

Why not MEL- AKL -RAR then into the hotel for 24 hours? That would be a fairly sweet duty.

Because that would either require overnighting AKL based crew in MEL, or using MEL based crew.

We're as running it as, AKL-MEL-AKL-RAR-AKL would only require the use of two AKL crew sets and no accommodation etc.