Carry on: Kiwis' LAX frustrations, first B737 MAX 9 and Qatar's suites for four

Kiwis' frustrations at LAX may end
Air New Zealand chief executive Christopher Luxon has gone to the top in the hope of sorting out transit problems for Kiwi travellers at Los Angeles International Airport. He has had a meeting in Washington DC with Secretary of Transport Elaine Chao, who a member of President Trump’s Cabinet. He also met senior officials in the Transport Security Administration and the Department of Homeland Security.

Air New Zealand is one of only a very few airlines that has an international transit in the US – that is, Air New Zealand Flight One uses the same aircraft to land and take off on the Auckland-London route. In transit passengers most of their hour or two on thr ground in queues.

“We think there’s room for an improved process that would benefit customers without compromising security, and would also reflect well on LAX as a major hub airport,” Mr Luxon says with some understatement.

American visitors to New Zealand are up 19.8%, with almost 300,000 visitors arriving in the year to January 2017. The success of Air New Zealand’s new Houston service, which makes travel easier for visitors from the mid-west, east and south of the United States is a key factor in this growth.

Air New Zealand upgrades B777-300ER fleet...
Air New Zealand’s newly reconfigured Boeing 777-300ERs with premium economy seating will be introduced on to the Auckland-Los Angeles-London Heathrow route from September 17. The same aircraft will be introduced on flights to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney from September 17. The reconfigured cabins already exist on the fleet of B777-200ERs and B787-10 Dreamliners.

... and expands codeshare with Japan's ANA
Air New Zealand will expand its codeshare agreement with Japan’s ANA to coincide with its first Auckland-Tokyo Haneda service on July 22.  The new codeshare routes include ANA-operated flights from
Tokyo Haneda to Fukuoka. Osaka Itami
and Sapporo New Chitose.

Boeing rolls out first B737 MAX 9
Boeing’s largest-ever 737, the MAX 9, emerges for the first time from the factory at Renton, Seattle, to be greeted by thousands of employees. The new model extends the maximum seating number to 220 with the same range of 3515 nautical miles (6510km) as the MAX 8, which is due for delivery to its first customers in the second quarter of this year. The third and smaller MAX 7, which seats up to 172 passengers but has a longer range (3825nm/7080km), is yet to go into production, as is the MAX 200. The delivery airline for the MAX 9 is Indonesia’s Lion Air with the first scheduled flight in 2018. The range has a total 3600 orders from 83 customers worldwide. Meanwhile, Boeing Co. is nearing a decision on whether to build a MAX 10 targeted for even longer routes and filling a gap in its lineup against the Airbus A321neo.

Passenger demand growth hits five-year peak  
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) says demand (revenue passenger kilometres or RPKs) rose 9.6% in January compared with a year earlier. This is the strongest increase in more than five years. Results were positively affected by traffic associated with the Lunar (Chinese) New Year celebrations, which occurred earlier this year. IATA estimates the holiday-related travel contributed up to one-half a percentage point in extra demand growth. January capacity rose 8.0%, and load factor climbed 1.2 percentage points to 80.2%.

Jetstar, Virgin Australia fined for ‘drip pricing’
The Australian Federal Court fined Jetstar and Virgin Australia hundreds of thousands of dollars for drip pricing, the practice of advertising a cheap airfare online, then adding a range of fees and charges later, pushing up the final price. Jetstar will pay a $A545,000 penalty and Virgin Australia $A200,000 for making false or misleading representations on their sites in 2013 and 2014.

Qatar creates foursomes in new QSuites
Qatar Airways unveiled the first double bed available in business class at the ITB Berlin exhibition, saying the QSuites will also allow passengers in adjoining seats to create their own private room. Adjustable panels and movable TV monitors on the centre four seats will enable four travelling together to dine and socialise together. The QSuite concept will be retrofitted on to the existing Qatar Airways fleet starting from June 2017, at an estimated rate of one aircraft a month.

Route news of the week
Emirates says it’s ready to commence its daily Dubai-Athens-Newark (New Jersey/New York) service on March 12 despite New York politicians pleading US President Donald Trump to stop it. Some 25 members of the New York and New Jersey congressional delegation have written to President Trump, seeking his intervention to stop the service. Emirates says it has all the necessary approvals and is using so-called “fifth freedom” rights to fly between two countries as long as the service originates in the airline’s home country. Fiji Airways and India's Jet Airways have agreed to a codeshare partnership from March, covering service between India and Fiji, via Hong Kong and Singapore. Planned codeshare routes includes the following: 
Chennai-Singapore, Delhi-Hong Kong, Delhi-Singapore, Mumbai-Hong Kong and Mumbai-Singapore (operated by Jet Airways); and Nadi-Hong Kong and Nadi-Singapore (operated by Fiji Airways).