Air New Zealand offers direct, non-stop flights from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, Chicago and Vancouver. Direct flights from New York start in September 2022. If you live further south in Miami you can fly to Houston with American Airlines to connect with the Air New Zealand Houston to Auckland, New Zealand flight.
A number of other well-known airlines offer other options to New Zealand; check out American Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines or Qantas. Make sure to compare all the options and book nice and early to lock in a good-value fare.
Non-stop flights from the West Coast or Vancouver
Travelling to New Zealand from USA’s West Coast or from Vancouver in Canada takes about 12-14 hours. What’s cool about that is you can do it in one flight – no stopovers. Every evening, a flight departs from Los Angeles and arrives in Auckland, New Zealand 12 hours later. That’s dinner, a movie and maybe a little tipple before bed, and the flight is over before you know it. To put this in perspective, it is actually easier and faster to get to New Zealand from LA than to Ireland or Italy.
What the International Date Line means for North American travellers
Because we are one of the first places on earth to see the sun, when travelling from North America, you technically have to journey forward in time to get here. Yep, the old International Date Line is a bit hard to get your head around, but let us explain. If you leave LA on a Friday night, you will arrive in New Zealand on a Sunday morning. But don’t worry – you’ll get that ‘lost’ day back when you return home! Say your flight departs Auckland to go back to LA on a Sunday afternoon. You’ll arrive back in North America on the same calendar day, just a little later in the evening. Don’t hesitate to chat to us about this little quirk of New Zealand travel – we can explain it in more detail; it’s a really common question that we get asked often.
Update: We always get heaps of questions about how long it takes to fly to New Zealand from different cities in the USA, take a look at this blogpost with a handy guide to flight times from all the major American airports.