Australians will finally be allowed to travel quarantine-free to New Zealand once again on 13 April 2022, with the New Zealand government yesterday announcing the much-anticipated reopening of the country’s border.

From 11.59pm on 12 April, Australians will be allowed to enter New Zealand without needing to quarantine. Travellers will just need to be fully vaccinated and get a negative COVID-19 test before flying to New Zealand, then self-administer two rapid antigen tests after arriving and on day 5 or 6.

From 11.59pm on 1 May, New Zealand will then reopen to tourists from visa-free countries like the USA, UK, Germany, Singapore, Japan and South Korea.

Currently, New Zealand is officially still only planning to reopen to tourists from other countries in October 2022. But this is being reviewed and is likely to be brought forward.

In early February 2022, the New Zealand had government announced Australians would be allowed to return from July. This has now been brought forward.

New Zealand’s border has been closed to Australians since the short-lived “trans-Tasman bubble” was shut down on 23 July 2021.

New Zealand is currently experiencing its largest COVID-19 outbreak since the beginning of the pandemic. Yesterday, New Zealand reported 19,577 new COVID-19 cases. Of those, 35 cases were picked up at the border and the remaining 19,542 cases were from community transmission. Under such circumstances, keeping the international border closed no longer makes sense.

Which airlines are flying from Australia to New Zealand?

Air New Zealand is currently operating the vast majority of trans-Tasman flights. These are supplemented at the moment by just two weekly Qantas flights between Auckland and Sydney. But Qantas and Jetstar have announced that they will put on more flights to New Zealand from 13 April, when the border reopens to Australians.

From this date, Qantas will increase its Sydney-Auckland flights to daily. It will also add daily Brisbane-Auckland, Melbourne-Auckland and Sydney-Christchurch flights. Meanwhile, Jetstar will resume 3x weekly Gold Coast-Auckland flights.

This is significantly less capacity than Qantas and Jetstar added back onto trans-Tasman routes when the trans-Tasman bubble was announced last year. Given many trans-Tasman flights were flying close to empty during that time, and Qantas now has lots of other places it can profitably fly its planes, this isn’t surprising.

Qantas and Jetstar will increase trans-Tasman frequencies and resume more routes to Wellington and Queenstown during May and June.

LATAM Airlines will also resume 3x weekly Sydney-Auckland flights from the end of this month. These fifth-freedom flights continue to/from Santiago, Chile.

Virgin Australia is currently only planning to resume flights to Queenstown from November 2022, and is not currently scheduling any flights to Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch or Dunedin.

More countries reopening to international tourists in April

New Zealand’s announcement comes as other countries in the Asia-Pacific region also prepare to reopen their borders to tourists next month.

New Caledonia already reopened to vaccinated tourists last week, while South Korea and Malaysia will reopen on 1 April 2022.

Join the discussion on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum: NZ Border locked to non-residents/NZ citizens until April 30 2022

Matt Graham

The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to over 90 countries… with the help of frequent flyer points, of course!
Matt's favourite destinations (so far) are Germany, Brazil & Kazakhstan. His interests include economics, aviation & foreign languages, and he has a soft spot for good food and red wine.

You can connect with Matt by posting on the Australian Frequent Flyer community forum and tagging @AFF Editor.