Where will Air NZ’s $35 million retrofitted Dreamliners fly to?

Monday, 5 May 2025

Air New Zealand has unveiled its new-look Boeing 787 Dreamliner after its world first nose-to-tail retrofit.

Stuff Travel was given a first look inside at the new interior, seats and entertainment screens.

It will make its inaugural flight on May 19 to Brisbane before coming back to Auckland to fly to San Francisco later that evening. The aircraft will also fly to Rarotonga, and Vancouver, with more routes to follow as more of the retrofits are complete.

The first of the 14 planes to undergo a makeover spent 184 days in Singapore getting its next fit-out.

Chief executive Greg Foran told Stuff Travel that the next ones, one of which is already in Singapore, was expected to take only 45 days to retrofit.

“That’s because we don’t have to go through all the regulatory approvals. So progressively what Kiwis are going to find is that over the next 12 to 18 months the chances of getting on a what feels to be a brand new plane are going to increase substantially.”

Foran said “it was time” to overhaul the planes.

“The product that was on here, the seats, the layout, the entertainment system, is the best part of 25 years old. Although some of the planes aren’t that old, the product that we’ve been putting on them was first designed 25 years ago. The world of aviation has moved on a lot. There’s a lot of new features that come these days.

“Rather than wait for the new planes, and the new planes are coming but they are the best part of still a year away, we wanted to get on and give everyone something new. The rest of them will get knocked over next year and we’ll have what feels to be a brand new 787 Dreamliner.”

He said having one plane out at a time was something they had to consider when deciding to do the retrofit.

“Normally in a fleet, when you get to about 20 aircraft you look to have a spare. We have circa 24 wide-body planes, a mixture of 777s and 787s so having one out is sort of okay. The bigger issue that we are contending with is that we have four out because we don’t have engines, so that creates a bit of a challenge.

“I can tell you that one of the decisions that we’ve wrestled with is that do we actually get on and do the retrofit or do we keep a plane back whilst we’re dealing with the engines. We decided that we would get on and do the retrofits. We think it’s so important to have something new that’s coming through, not just aircraft but new uniforms, new entertainment systems, that would be important so it just means we’ve had to go and lease other aircraft to fill that gap.”

Each aircraft cost $35 million to retrofit but Air New Zealand said it doesn’t cost any extra to fly on it, unless you book Business Premier Luxe - the front four seats of the Business Premier cabin. It has all the features of the business cabin: additional storage, wireless charging for devices, a 61-centimetre (24-inch) in-flight entertainment screen, middle seats with a sliding screen, so you can share your space with someone next to you, and continuous recline from seat to bed mode.

The business premier luxe adds an ottoman that doubles as a guest seat so you can dine together, a larger bed with unrestricted space at the end and a full closing door.

Business Premier Luxe can be booked as a paid seat select product when purchasing a Business Premier seat and costs an additional $820 for long haul, $380 for mid haul (Perth and Papeete) and $210 on short haul.

The premium economy cabins have 33 seats with a leg and foot rest, more leg room, a fixed, hard outer shell allowing passengers to recline without impacting the person behind them and a larger 39cm (15.6 inches) in-flight entertainment screen.

Foran said coming up with only one of his favourite features of the new design was “difficult” but he pointed out the premium economy seats.

Slimmer seats in economy give the 213 seats an extra 2.5cm of leg room. They also have 50% bigger in-flight entertainment screens at 33.7cm (13.3 inches), making it one of the largest economy cabin screens in the world.

Some seats offer an 88cm pitch, rather than the 78cm as standard.

Sky Pantry is available on long haul flights in economy so you can snack when you want from the likes of popcorn, Cookie Time cookies and chips.

The airline’s retrofitted Dreamliners will have a new in-flight entertainment system.

Passengers will be able to connect their own Bluetooth headphones to the system and link their phone or device to use as a remote control for the screen.

For those who forget their own, the headphones that are currently supplied will remain available to passengers.

Seats are available for purchase from Wednesday May 7.