Air New Zealand this morning announced it is ordering new Boeing Dreamliners to replace its 777-200s which are being phased out from 2022.
The airline this morning said it will buy eight 787-10 planes and will switch out from Rolls-Royce engines to General Electric to power them. They will cost $2.7 billion at list prices but will get a significant discount.
The planes are bigger than those Dreamliners that have been in the airline's fleet since 2014.
Chief executive Christopher Luxon said it was an ''incredibly exciting day'' for the airline.
He said it marked a new chapter and had rights to take up to 20 Dreamliners, some of which could be 787-9 planes.
Following a two-year process, the airline had narrowed down its options to a new iteration of the Dreamliner and the Airbus A350, of which more than 500 are in service.
The airline has said both were excellent planes well suited to the airline's aspiration of flying as far as Auckland-New York in the future, a distance of 14,200km.
The larger Boeing 777X, which is still in development, had been considered but was not in the running this time, more likely an option further down the track for the airline's younger and larger 777-300s.
Boeing had presented new options for the 787 which, aside from the Rolls-Royce engine issues, has been a highly successful plane for the airline for the past five years. It has 13 in its fleet and another one to come as part of the original deal, first signed in 2004. The airline has taken the opportunity to switch engine makers after more than 18 months of disruption caused by Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 Package C engine problems. It has gone with General Electric (GE) for the new Dreamliners.