Etihad Airways Signs Maintenance Deal With Air New Zealand

Etihad Airways and Air New Zealand have signed an agreement to provide reciprocal line maintenance services in Melbourne, Australia and Los Angeles.

As part of the deal, Etihad will perform all scheduled and non-scheduled line maintenance on Air New Zealand aircrafts in Melbourne at its Tullamarine engineering facility, including transit, daily and weekly checks, engineering services, fault repairs for aircraft systems and cabins. In return, Air New Zealand is already performing full line maintenance of Etihad Airways in Los Angeles.

“Our successful codeshare partnership with Air New Zealand goes back three years,” said Jeff Wilkinson, Etihad Airways senior vice president, Technical.

“We also expect this announcement to lead to further employment opportunities at our Melbourne line maintenance facility in the future.”

Etihad started a daily non-stop service between Abu Dhabi and Los Angeles on June 1 2014, using a three-class Airbus A340-500 aircraft. From mid-July, a Boeing 777-200LR will operate the route. Air New Zealand has operations from Los Angeles to Auckland, London-Heathrow and Rarotonga.

Air New Zealand operates an average of five flights a day from Melbourne to Auckland, Christchurch and Wellington, as well as a seasonal service to Queenstown.

The agreement with Air New Zealand is part of a series of line maintenance extensions by the Abu Dhabi airline. In March last year, Etihad signed a similar deal with partner airberlin, to provide maintenance services for the German carrier’s Chicago flights.

Etihad Airways’ existing line maintenance facilities are in Dublin, Lahore, London-Heathrow, Manchester, Melbourne and Sydney.