Pacific Blue begins operations on four new international services from New Zealand this week as part of its expansion plan.

The carrier, a subsidiary of Australia's Virgin Blue, is launching its twice-weekly Sydney-Queenstown service tomorrow.

"Our guests have lobbied us for some time to start direct flights from Sydney to Queenstown, so we're responding to them at last with the opening of the new route," says Virgin Blue CEO Brett Godfrey.

Earlier this week, it launched thrice weekly Hamilton-Sydney, Hamilton-Brisbane and Dunedin-Brisbane services. It will also launch a twice-weekly domestic Auckland-Queenstown service on 19 September.

Pacific Blue has a fleet of eight Boeing 737-800s, according to Flightglobal's ACAS database.

It has been flying between New Zealand's three main cities, Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, since November 2007 and added domestic Dunedin services in July 2008. With the services from Hamilton and Queenstown, it will fly internationally from six New Zealand Airports.

Source: Air Transport Intelligence news