LATAM Airlines is axing its long-standing fifth-freedom service between Sydney and Auckland. The last LA800 and LA801 services across the Tasman will operate on Sunday, 26 October 2025.
This marks the end of an era for LATAM, which had operated Sydney-Auckland as a daily flight for decades. It’s a tag flight that continues on from Auckland to Santiago, Chile. LATAM currently uses a Boeing 787 for this service, but at one point it was on an Airbus A340.
This flight had been popular for its cheap airfares and lie-flat Business Class seating – a vast upgrade over the Boeing 737s Qantas uses on the same route. My family and I used it often.
As LATAM is a Qantas partner airline, Qantas customers could also book this flight as a Qantas codeshare to earn points and status credits.
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Fifth-freedom flights between Sydney and Auckland
Over the years, many foreign airlines have operated fifth-freedom tag flights between Sydney and Auckland. But once LATAM pulls up stumps, China Eastern will be the only one remaining.
Other non-Australian or New Zealand airlines that have previously flown this route include AirAsia X, Emirates, China Airlines and Aerolíneas Argentinas.
More non-stop LATAM flights to South America
In the past, the Auckland stop between Sydney and Santiago served two purposes:
- It acted as a refuelling stop as its older aircraft couldn’t make the journey from Santiago to Sydney in one go
- It allowed LATAM to offer flights to both Australia and New Zealand with the same plane, helping to fill more seats
Nowadays, neither of those things are really an issue. The Boeing 787 is more than capable of flying Sydney-Santiago and even Melbourne-Santiago without stopping. And there’s now enough demand that LATAM can profitably fill separate flights from Santiago to both Auckland and Sydney.
After pulling the plug on Sydney-Auckland flights, LATAM will increase its non-stop services from both Sydney and Melbourne to daily until March 2026. It will also retain the Auckland-Santiago portion of LA800/801, but reduce the frequency to 4x weekly.
From late October 2025, LATAM will change the schedule of its Santiago-Auckland service. Instead of leaving Santiago just after midnight and flying through the night, LA801 will become a 1pm departure and arrive in Auckland at 5.30pm.
Over the southern summer period, when demand is at its highest, Qantas will also add extra flights between Sydney and Santiago.
The 2024 LA800 incident
In March 2024, flight LA800 from Sydney to Auckland made headlines when an in-flight upset caused injuries to 50 passengers and crew. Around a dozen of those people were hospitalised after landing in New Zealand, and the onward flight from Auckland to Santiago had to be cancelled that day.
A preliminary report blamed an issue with the captain’s seat unexpectedly moving forward during the flight.
