Air New Zealand Ltd said charter flights between Japan and Auckland during the summer were popular, with three charters in January sold out and the fourth on December 28 achieving an 80 percent load factor.Three services using 767-300 aircraft, operated from Nagoya with the fourth from Okinawa, resulted in almost 900 additional Japanese tourists visiting New Zealand.

Auckland International Airport Ltd supported the flights with VIP handling of arriving passengers. Air New Zealand is repositioning its marketing campaign in Japan by focusing on the  new  New Zealand with the aim of attracting tourists to experience based activities.The airline carried 939,000 passengers in January, up 1.7 percent on the same month last year. Demand was down 6.9 percent and capacity was reduced by 9.7 percent. The group load factor increased by 2.6 percentage points.

Short haul passenger numbers rise 3.9 percent when compared to January last year and long haul numbers rise 8.7 percent. The load factor on short haul was 82.2 percent and on long haul it was 84.7 percent.