Air New Zealand xx taxis at JFK.
Air New ZealandA new report shows that Kennedy International Airport has been among the biggest airport beneficiaries of the past year’s increase in international travel, which has vastly increased connectivity between international and domestic flights.
The JFK gateway is so desirable that in the past year, both Air New Zealand and Qantas added non-stop Boeing 787 flights to Auckland, with the Qantas flight continuing to Sydney.
The report issued Wednesday measures connectivity, which travel data company OAG measured by comparing the total possible number of international connections between inbound and outbound flights within a six-hour window on Aug. 11. That day was the year’s busiest travel day, said OAG, which compared it with flight data from the same day a year earlier.
Among the top international megahubs, JFK ranked second, up from 18th in 2019. London Heathrow ranked first, just as it did in 2019. The report was not issued during the pandemic.
“JFK punches above its weight with high volumes of potential connecting options across its extensive network, and sits just outside the Top 10 largest global airports by scheduled seat capacity,” the report said. “JFK has moved up the rankings considerably from 18th position in 2019, in part driven by American Airlines operating seven more international destinations in 2023, and new services from several carriers including Qantas, Air New Zealand and Air Senegal.”
As the three global U.S. carriers have consistently made clear in multiple presentations this year, international travel has generally been strong, with the transatlantic market extremely strong and China lagging. Additionally, Kennedy benefitted when JetBlue augmented its partnership with American, although it has been negatively impacted by the partnership’s undoing after a U.S. District Court Judge in Boston found in May that the Northeast Alliance was anti-competitive.
“JFK has always been the primary gateway for international service in the U.S.,” said OAG chief analyst John Grant. “It benefitted from a range of new international services that have started in the last twelve months.”
Grant’s report was issued a day after the one-year anniversary of Air New Zealand’s Auckland flight, which operates three days a week. The flight prompted a response from Qantas, a traditional rival, which launched Sydney-Auckland-JFK service in June.
“Air New Zealand’s New York route has been a resounding success since it launched one year ago,” said Ben Evers-Swindell, the carrier’s general manager for North America, in a prepared statement. “We’ve operated more than 311 flights on the ultra-long-haul route, carrying consistently strong load factors both out of Auckland and JFK. This first year is just the beginning of our commitment to New York.”
The flight operates by heading south and takes 17 hours and 35 minutes. The carrier said its passengers have drunk 5,000 bottles of New Zealand wine, eaten 112,000 meals, and watched 344,000 hours of movies.
Other new flights at JFK this summer have included Delta flights to Geneva and Rome, SAS to Copenhagen and JetBlue to Amsterdam and Paris. Obviously, all of them enabled increased international connections.
During the 12 months ending July 30, Delta was the fastest growing carrier at JFK, according to airport statistics. During the period, Delta’s passenger count grew 29% to 17.7 million. JetBlue’s count grew 28% to 17 million. American’s count grew 13% to 8 million and Alaska grew 2.1% to 1.3 million.