Air New Zealand’s fourth and final B777 will soon resume service after spending 850 days in Mojave Desert storage. The aircraft will undergo maintenance at Air New Zealand’s hangar and resume operations on the San Francisco route later this week.
“The return of all four B777 from storage shows how well the airline is bouncing back after COVID,” commented Alex Marren, Chief Operations Officer, Air New Zealand. “Having all our 777-300s back will help build more resilience and more seats into our international operation, meaning we can fly more customers to where they need to go – whether that’s to San Francisco, Honolulu, Houston or Tahiti. It will also mean we can operate 24 return flights to Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago every week and offer 3,216 more seats into these ports when compared with the 787 aircraft we previously used on these routes.”
The return of four 777s will deliver more than 900,000 seats over the peak Northern summer season, giving a huge boost to New Zealand’s travel and tourism sector.
Bringing an aircraft from storage is not an easy task. “The process starts off with unwrapping the plane from its storage protection and then it gets a good wash, getting rid of the dust and grime that has accumulated in the desert. Then it goes through a thorough servicing and maintenance programme. It’s a long and a complicated process and our engineering and maintenance team have done an amazing job getting the aircraft ready to fly again,” the airline said in a statement.
A pilot team spends a day running through checks and tests on the final day.
