The new service resembles the recent one involving Air New Zealand and United Airlines.
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American Airlines and Qantas will be joint venture partners in a new daily service between Los Angeles and Auckland starting in June next year.
This has been confirmed at an announcement in Wellington today attended by American's chief executive, Doug Parker, Qantas' Alan Joyce and Transport Minister Simon Bridges.
In a mirror arrangement of the recent Air New Zealand [NZX: AIR]-United Airlines deal involving flights between Auckland and San Francisco, Mr Parker says the route would not have been justified if either airline acted alone.
Mr Joyce says the route is the "missing link" that makes triangular travel possible from the US – arriving in New Zealand and returning via Australia, or vice versa.
Like the United service, which starts in July next year, American will use a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner seating 226 passengers in a two-class configuration.
The airlines say the Auckland-Los Angeles route is growing at 10% annually and this will increase further.
"There is room for both of us," Mr Parker says in reference to the United-Air NZ partnership.
Also like United, American will offer hundreds of connections at Los Angeles to onward destinations.
Largest US airline
In American's case, this includes a total of 150 cities in the US and 50 direct from Los Angeles including destinations in Canada, Mexico, Sao Paulo in Brazil and even London.
American is the largest carrier in the US, having recently merged with US Airlines, and operates 200 daily flights from Los Angeles. It employs some 100,000 staff handling nearly 6700 flights a day to nearly 350 destinations in more than 50 countries.
An important feature of both these new services is that the respective airlines are part of alliances that offer access to each other's domestic and international networks, allowing travel between hundreds of cities on one ticket with minimum stops.
For example, the addition of Jetstar's new regional routes in New Zealand will mean two-stop travel from Palmerston North to most major cities in the US, while travellers Down Under will have 11 connected cities in New Zealand and 40 in Australia.
The joint venture expands an existing one between Qantas and American on flights from Sydney to both Los Angeles and San Francisco.
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