Jetstar celebrated a new milestone on its trans-Tasman network this morning with the arrival of its first Melbourne-Wellington flight.

The new service touched down in the capital from Melbourne shortly after 6:00am, marking the start of a regular four times a week schedule between the two destinations.

Grant Kerr, Jetstar Head of New Zealand, said the airline was now flying on more trans-Tasman routes than ever before.

“This is our 11^th route across the Tasman and our third new trans-Tasman route in the past four months,” Mr Kerr said.

“Along with our recently introduced services from both Wellington and Queenstown to the Gold Coast we’ve added a total of more than 185,000 new seats across the Tasman on an annual basis.”

Mr Kerr said 2015 was shaping up to be the airline’s busiest year flying between New Zealand and Australia.

“With the addition of the three new routes and increased winter flights to Queenstown we expect 2015 will be a record for us in terms of customers flown across the Tasman,” he said.

Jetstar offers more than 50 regularly scheduled return services a week from Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Queenstown to Melbourne, Sydney and the Gold Coast, increasing to more than 60 services a week at peak periods.

Mr Kerr said Wellingtonians had responded well to the new low fare offerings from the capital.

“We’re happy with the support we’re receiving for our new Melbourne services and our recent Gold Coast services,” he said.

“With the Kiwi dollar reaching a post-float high against the Aussie dollar recently we expect demand for travel to Australia to continue to show solid growth.”

Jetstar is flying Melbourne-Wellington on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday using a 180-seat Airbus A320 aircraft in a single class.