Air New Zealand has started sending planes to the Australian desert?

Last month Air New Zealand announced it was going to send some of its out-of-service aircraft into storage in the Australian desert. The national carrier has been grappling with supply problems with Rolls Royce and Pratt & Whitney engines for months. In some cases, the engines of brand-new domestic jets were used on internationally configured aircraft.

In a statement, Air NZ said a combination of A321, and 787 aircraft would fly to Alice Springs for storage as “the dry and low humidity conditions are very suitable for aircraft storage, and the move frees up space at our Auckland hangars for its scheduled engineering and maintenance programme”.

Alice Springs famously became a storage area for aircraft during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic with up to 180 aircraft parked up there at one stage. (Cathay Pacific had over 60 aircraft there)

An A321, with the registration ZK-OYC (MSN11096), landed in Alice Springs in the Northern Territory on Tuesday the 27th of August at 12.28 pm. Flightradar24 shows the aircraft leaving Auckland for Adelaide on Monday afternoon, before flying to Alice Springs the next day.

This particular plane was introduced with fanfare in February 2023. It had been designed specifically for short-haul and domestic routes to fly predominantly on the airline’s trunk routes, between Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, Queenstown and Dunedin.

The next day, Wednesday the 28th of August a Boeing 777-300 with the registration B-KQG (MSN 42142) landed from Hong Kong at 8.36 am, but Flightradar24 has it in Air New Zealand colours.

Then, two days later on Friday the 30th of August a Boeing 787-9 with the registration ZK-NZF) landed at 11.06 am from Auckland 

Air NZ will have up to four aircraft on the ground in Alice Springs at any one time and it will swap them in and out as engines become available.

Last year, CEO Greg Foran warned schedules would be affected by the engine issues for up to two years. In July 2023, Pratt & Whitney said there was a condition affecting the maintenance plan for the Geared Turbofan jet engine fleet, with up to 700 engines globally impacted over three years.

As a result, Air NZ halted flights to Hobart and Seoul to help maintain “a reliable service across the rest of our network and get customers on our most in-demand routes to where they need to be,” said Foran at the time. It also entered twice into lease agreements with Spanish charter airline Wamos Air to fly on the Auckland-Perth route.

I believe there is another 787 and two more A321's yet to arrive in the next few weeks.