Air New Zealand is adding more capacity to its domestic schedule for the busy festive season, upgauging existing Airbus A320 services to the Airbus A321 from Monday 7 December until the end of December. Air New Zealand’s Chief Customer and Sales Officer Leanne Geraghty says the airline will upgauge more than 350 flights to larger aircraft during December due to better than expected pre-Christmas and business travel demand. “We want to make sure Kiwis can get to where they need to be in this busy Christmas period, so we’ll be progressively adding around 16,000 new seats for travel in December. "This will see around 80 percent of Auckland-Wellington services and around 25 percent of Auckland-Christchurch services operated by our new and larger A321 aircraft with 214 seats compared to the A320’s 171. Customers will also get a bonus of inflight entertainment on these flights," Ms Geraghty said. “As always, we recommend getting in early to take advantage of our lowest fares. Naturally, demand is higher for travel at certain times of the day, for example, first thing in the morning. By flying at different times of the day, customers will find more fare options available." Ms Geraghty said that demand in the post-COVID world has been far more variable than pre-COVID, with bookings often being made very late and flights selling out. "We’ve been adding capacity wherever possible which makes more seats available at lower fares. In November we added more than 26,000 seats to the network for travel in the same month, either by adding new flights or deploying larger aircraft on existing routes." “We are doing what we can to keep Kiwis connected and have so far sold more than 550,000 seats for under $100 for travel between December and February.” Air New Zealand, AirlineRatings.com Airline of the Year in 2020 has led the world in responding to COVID-19 with dramatic enhancements for passenger safety.