Hawaiian Airlines says there is enough demand for its Honolulu to Auckland service to increase capacity, despite flights not beginning until next year.
The airline launches its three times a week service between Honolulu and Auckland in March.
The executive vice president, Peter Ingram, says a strong demand has led it to switch to a larger aircraft, a 294-seat Airbus A330 instead of the 264-seat Boeing 767.
He says there is demand that has been latent for some years.
"If you look at the historic visitor stats between New Zealand and Hawaii, going back to '98/99, there was much more traffic between the two routes, and the decline we think, is really attributed to constraint on capacity in recent years, so we think there's an opportunity to fill up these flights."
Peter Ingram says Hawaiian is also expanding into Brisbane, and will be the only US carrier serving both cities with its own aircraft.
