A new connection between Singapore and New Zealand will start later this year with Star Alliance airline Air New Zealand announcing plans to resurrect the non-stop Christchurch route into its schedules five times per week from December 2019.
The news follows approval of a five year extension to the airline’s joint venture with Singapore Airlines on Singapore to New Zealand services.
The schedule
Air New Zealand will fly the Singapore – Christchurch route using a Boeing 787-9 with the following schedule from 1st December 2019 to 22nd February 2020. Overnight service is provided from Singapore to Christchurch, with a daytime flight back to Singapore.
1st December 2019 to 22nd February 2020
| Flight | From / To | Aircraft | Days |
| NZ295 | SIN1840 – CHC0930* | 789 | ·2·4567 |
| NZ296 | CHC1105 – SIN1630 | 789 | ·2·4567 |
* Next day
Flight time is 9 hours 50 minutes from Singapore to Christchurch and 10 hours 25 minutes from Christchurch to Singapore.
The aircraft is configured with 27 Business Class seats in a 1-2-1 configuration, 33 Premium Economy seats in a 2-3-2 configuration and 215 Economy Class seats in a 3-3-3 configuration, some of which convert into the airline’s ‘Skycouch’ product.
Wi-Fi is not available on Air New Zealand’s Boeing 787s.
These flights will supplement Singapore Airlines’ existing non-stop Christchurch services, operating almost exactly an hour behind these new flights in both directions, but served on a daily basis.
As you may recall SIA gave the Christchurch route a boost earlier this year, with the previous Boeing 777-200ER replaced with a 3-class Airbus A350, offering newer cabin products, from 7th January 2019.
These additional flights effectively replace a Singapore Airlines Boeing 777-200ER which was used in previous years during the seasonal boost over a similar date range on this route, however the Air New Zealand Boeing 787 will offer significantly more premium cabin capacity and will operate on two more days of the week.
Award redemptions
Air New Zealand is notoriously stingy when it comes to offering award seats to Star Alliance partners. As such they have released a grand total of zero redemptions in either Economy or Business Class to KrisFlyer members so far on this seasonal service.
If any award seats do become available, the following redemption rates would apply.
| Air New Zealand redemption Singapore – Christchurch | ||
| FFP used | Economy | Business |
 |
32,500 | 66,000 |
 |
25,000 | 50,000 |
 |
22,500 | 40,000 |
 |
40,000 | 55,000 |
 |
30,000 | 52,500 |
Ticket prices
If you’re interested in the cost of cash tickets on this route, they aren’t coming in particularly cheap at this stage. These are the prices for December 2019.
| Route | Economy | Premium Economy | Business |
| SIN-CHC | S$954 | S$1,830 | S$4,010 |
| SIN-CHC-SIN | S$1,355 | S$3,287 | S$5,457 |
| CHC-SIN | S$602 | S$1,213 | S$2,080 |
| CHC-SIN-CHC | S$1,345 | S$2,430 | S$4,117 |
Air New Zealand and Singapore Airlines also offer 21 weekly return flights from Singapore to Auckland in the northern winter season, in addition to which Singapore Airlines serves Wellington four days per week, via Melbourne.
Air New Zealand previously served the Singapore – Christchurch route in 2002.
(Cover Photo: Air New Zealand)
Looks like you made a typo on the Premium Economy cash fares for CHC-SIN-CHC return. The dare you’ve mentioned seemed to be the CHC-SIN one way fare…?
Thanks for spotting that, yes the round trip PE fares were wrong. Now corrected.