Air New Zealand will restart its Wellington-Queenstown route in time for Queen’s Birthday weekend and is also adding additional flights between Auckland and Queenstown.

The airline will resume flying between the capital and Queenstown on 28 May.

Air New Zealand General Manager Networks Scott Carr says it’s been great to start flying to Queenstown from both Christchurch and Auckland in the past week and the airline is now looking forward to getting Wellington services underway.

“We’ve been sufficiently encouraged by demand for seats into Queenstown since publishing our schedule for Alert Level 2 that we’re bringing forward the resumption of services from Wellington. In addition, we’ll be adding further flights from Auckland to cater for those wanting to head south over Queen’s Birthday weekend.

“We’re keen to bring more New Zealanders to Queenstown and to boost the tourism industry in particular. The requirement for physical distancing on our services does mean that we need to also see strong demand for seats in both directions, so we hope that the additional services will also cater to Queenstown locals looking to travel north.”

The airline will operate a daily return service between Wellington and Queenstown between 28 May and 2 June, as well as a daily return service on 5 June and 7 June using its A320 aircraft. From 12 June there will be three return Wellington-Queenstown A320 services a week on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Additional frequencies will be reintroduced back as demand permits.