NZ first carrier to be offer a full RTW service

NZ have now announced the long awaited 2nd daily LHR-AKL service. Starting October 28th the route will fly via HKG. And thus give *a a shot at the LHR-HKG market finally. This of course means that NZ are the only carrier (?) in the world to offer a full rtw service. Fantastic news for all who wish to travel down to NZ. The new setrvice will use a 744 and will see VS face direct competition with regards to the UCS.

NZ also announced 2xweekly LAX-CHC service starting up again on 28th Oct using a 777.

While this is great news, Air NZ certainly aren't the first carrier to do a RTW service.

UA used to operate a RTW flight pre-Sept 11th for a couple of years: UA1/2 used to do LAX-HKG-DEL-LHR-IAD-LAX and vv.

One thing I noticed in their timings is that I think they erroneously appeared to add an extra day to the AKL-HKG-LHR sector - they have it departing HKG at 0815, arriving LHR at 1330 +1, when, if my maths are to be trusted, it should be 1330 same day (ex-HKG), but 1330 +1 if you're counting from AKL. I guess it depends on how you look at it.

Cheers,
Mike

I believe either PanAm or TWA had a full around the world service as well, before they went out of business.

Lol ok then in the modern day!

I think the 13.30+1 is taken from AKL as the press realease was published in AKL.

a link to the press release is here.