R Class upgrade. Change to earn on UA?
 

Hi team.
Head back up to North America this weekend. Have upgrade to R class with Elite upgrade.
With the useless NZ loyalty programme going forward have been running up my UA account.
So can I change this booking to earn miles on UA (in the orginal A earning class) without upsetting my business class seat? Has anyone experienced doing this?
Thanks

Provided you have changed/entered your frequent flyer number in the booking to your UA number, wouldn't NZ then provide the original (NZ) booking class to UA when the miles are processed to your account?

They should, but it doesn't always work - even when crediting to Airpoints I've often ended up with boarding passes that stated AIRPOINTS: NIL on them when upgrades have cleared and had to subsequently do a missing points claim.

It may or may not work automatically, but a post-flight points claim will eventually resolve it if it doesn't post correctly.

Noting that UA right now is having serious issues posting any flights and their call center/email teams are backlogged significantly because of this and other merger related issues.

WLGNZ as a follow-on, note that the NZ system allows two ffp numbers to be entered:

FQTV - mileage accumulating frequent flyer number (whatever programme)
FQTS - status recording frequent flyer number(whatever programme)

In your case, you'll want FQTV set to your UA #, and FQTS set to your NZ #.

You could ring the call centre and make the arrangements above, or you could also simply do this at check-in - although I suspect the kiosk will overwrite both fields with your UA #, meaning NZ cabin crew wouldn't recognise you as NZ*GE.

I suggest calling Air NZ to jiggle the numbers. In either case, there should be no 'risk' to your upgrade, and as ajnz points out a manual claim for mileage may need to be done.

I've done this at checkin a few times. By that stage the in-flight concierge has put together their notes and I've been recognised as NZ*E even though the manifest says UA*G. This has been the case in both bizzo and cabbage.

And if the check-in agent doesn't know the keystrokes to achieve this, the following should do it:

Ooh - that's neat. Thanks!

I read that NZ is having issues with the new UA account numbers which are AANNNNNN where A represents alpha and N numeric. Apparently it will only correctly show your status with the old UA-NNNNNNNNNNN numbers or CO-AANNNNNN numbers. Although this may be fixed by the time of WLGNZ's flight.

A class is still good for 150% PQM on UA, so AKL-LAX-AKL will earn 16200PQMs - a good chunk.

Thanks.

Thanks for all the help guys.
The keystroke information was very helpful at check-in. As expected the agent did not know how to do this and the print out of the information worked out perfectly.
Now it will be interesting to see how the milage posts.
Also the system accepted the new alpha numeric UA number no probelms and had showed the correct status with them.

As a follow up. None of two return North America sectors have posted to UA making the enteries as above. The UA programme is not with out problems.
Also noticed the following informaiton from on Wingtips today:

ISSUE 2378
ADDING FREQUENT FLYER DETAILS TO BOOKINGS
Air New Zealand wishes to remind agents to add only one frequent flyer number when making a booking. Please ensure you ask your clients which membership programme they wish to earn points on. If more than one frequent flyer number is added the system will automatically take the membership that comes alphabetically first.

The latter is probably more related to agents that submit many FFPs into the booking by design (e.g. attempting to use different FFPs for different sectors) or by poor system implementation. TQ3 Navigant (pre-CWT borging) used to do this to me in NZ which resulted in some startling outcomes (QF numbers in NZ bookings, NZ numbers in QF bookings, etc).

Another failed experience with FQTV, etc...
 

A few weeks back, I was in a very similar situation to the OP, though I was upgrading from Y to A with a NZ recognition upgrade and wanting the mileage to accrue to UA.

My plan had been to wait until the upgrade cleared (which happened in the lounge at AKL), and change everything over to UA (where I do not have status).

The lounge agent promptly said doing this would invalidate my upgrade, and purging my account of my NZ status would also affect my already confirmed upgrade on the return. So I gave them instructions to insert UA account as FQTV and NZ account as FQTS (as above), which shouldn't impact the upgrade. Begrudgingly, she entered my UA details and showed me her screen showing:

FQTV: NZ *GE
FQTU: NZ *GE
FQTS: UA

I politely mentioned that she had FQTV and FQTS mixed up (I have no idea what FQTU is... perhaps an indicator of status for the upgrade queue?). A few calls to the premium team later resulted in two confirmations that what was showing would entitle me to the upgrade while earning points on UA. I continued to ask the agent to ignore that advice and put UA into FQTV and NZ into FQTS, but she stood by the premium team with the classic "hold on to your boarding pass in case anything goes wrong" line.

So, of course, I was right and obtained a worthless 50 airbucks immediately upon arrival at LAX.

Does anyone have experience with changing FF credit after it accrues to the "wrong" programme? Can NZ take back the airbucks and request credit from UA after the fact?

Or should I fork out $8 via OneSmart and get a free late-night return flight to WLG once I return.... :D

Bummer.

My own 'internal translation' was something like:

FQTV - FreQuent TraVeller (for mileage accrual)
FQTS - FreQuent Traveller Status (for status recognition)

and I can only presume FQTU is related to the Upgrade........

I've never tried to recover such a situation with NZ. Tried and failed with TG......

I had this on Thai the other day, with an instance that I couldn't possibly be Star Gold, despite producing multiple current Star Gold cards, because the wonderful Menzies stuff don't know how to put in a frequent flyer number properly.

First time that Thai have irritated me in the slightest.

Such situations regretfully call for a long rant at said member of staff for not being able to find their arse in the dark. Rude, but effective.