Air New Zealand to start Darwin flights?

With population and demand growing, and better range on narrow body jets could we see services from NZ to Darwin? especially now that Air NZ has ordered A320/A32neo aircraft.Thanks

It's an interesting question - I'd be interested to know what proportion of NZ tourists would see DRW (for Kakadu etc) as their sole destinaiton in AU. If most would prefer to transit via SYD/BNE/MEL in order to see family or do other tourist activities, then the likelihood is low, I would imagine. 
Thoughts? 

I'd think that the load factors would be too low for a direct turnaround service into DRW.

However, should they replace the 767 service to DPS (Bali) with a 777 or 787 to Bali, adding a stopover in DRW would deliver some much needed competition (in the full service space) to Jetstar and AirAsia. Neither Garuda nor Virgin serve Bali from Darwin, and backtracking from Singapore on Silkair or Kuala Lumpur on Malaysian is obviously not ideal.

If you start out with "with population growing..." then sure, at some indefinite point in the future when the population of Darwin is, say, a million people, it might happen. 

In the meantime, I really doubt that the demand will be there. Joining a city of ~1 million to a town of 120,000, six and a half hours apart, in different countries, skipping a bunch of perfectly reasonable one-stop options in between? Hard to think of any other air route in the world like that.

There would be more demand for a direct flight from NZ (Wellington) to Canberra, twice the size of Darwin and without an international connection.

I concur Fonga. (btw Canberra has a population thrice the size of Darwin)

No way.

Air NZ is cutting Cairns to a seasonal service. If they can't fill Cairns year-round there's no hope of filling Darwin.

Canberra is the only Australian destination I can envisage Air NZ adding to its list.

Personally, I would rule out an Air NZ return to Hobart. They used to service the Christchurch-Hobart route with 737's but haven't done so for over 20 years now. Today, Hobart serves well over 2 million passengers a year and may be a more viable option than it used to be.

Apologies, I mean "wouldn't rule out."