Winners and losers in Jetstar's regional flights

Jetstar has selected Nelson, Napier, New Plymouth and Palmerston North for its new regional network that will link those centres with Auckland and Wellington.

The first of the five routes, Nelson-Auckland and Napier-Auckland, will take off from the beginning of December.

New Plymouth-Auckland, Palmerston North-Auckland and Nelson-Wellington flights will follow early next year, with services scheduled to begin from February 1, 2016.

Jetstar first announced plans for a regional network in June this year and has been considering proposals from locations across the country for its initial expansion.

Centres to miss out were Hamilton, Tauranga, Rotorua and Invercargill.

Jetstar says the initial five regional routes will build a strong base for considering more regional destinations. 

"We’ll keep talking with stakeholders in Hamilton, Rotorua, Invercargill and Tauranga because they’ve all expressed a desire for airline competition and they support Jetstar’s model of stimulating market growth through lower fares,” Jetstar Australia and New Zealand chief executive David Hall says.

Jetstar is offering super-low $9 one-way regional launch fares from 9.30am-1.30pm today for travel between December 1-15, 2015, February 2-March 21, 2016, and May 4-June 29, 2016.


Regular one-way lead-in fares on the new regional services are $45 Nelson-Wellington and New Plymouth-Auckland and $49 on the three other routes.


Jetstar’s regional network will add more than 670,000 new seats a year to the domestic market, a significant increase on the airline’s current domestic jet seat capacity of over 2.6 million seats annually.

The flights will be operated by QantasLink. Under this arrangement, Qantas-owned Eastern Australia Airlines, which has operated Q300 aircraft in Australia for QantasLink for over 15 years, will manage the aircraft operations.

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