Air New Zealand (NZ, Auckland International) will likely retain its fleet of six B767-300s beyond their scheduled retirement date of 2017/18 airline Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Christopher Luxon has said.

According to Australian Aviation News, the New Zealand national carrier may continue to use the the widebody twinjets to provide needed capacity on its flights to the Pacific Islands, Australia, and some “fly and flop” outbound New Zealand destinations.

“It is a real option that we have and we probably will extend them I suspect just a couple more years,” Luxon said. "That’s because at the moment our capacity growth in this last six months of this year is about 12% and all of next year it will be around 11%. So we are growing fast and we are growing profitably through creating this demand and then adding the supply and the capacity that we need.”

Air New Zealand currently deploys its B767s on flights to Australia, various Pacific Islands, as well as Japan and the United States. In the long run, however, they will be replaced by a fleet of twelve B787-9s.