temete23

Just trying to get my head around these award flights.
I am looking at flights next year FRA-HKG via BKK(1hr 40 min connection) on TG in F, if I can book these with my air bucks is the cost 1515APD or 1515APD + 650APD(intra zone BKK-HKG).
The award site is confusing me with the note about applying to every sector of a partner award.

Kiwi Flyer

Look up the cost for every single flight and add together.

Don't forget the partner award fee, taxes and hefty fuel surcharges are all on top (but payable by credit card not airbucks).

Xiaotung

NZ don't seem to charge fuel surcharges on Star Awards.

temete23

Thanks for the replies guys.
It turned out to be a moot exercise ringing them as the couldn't see or access any TG F flights for all of October to BKK or HKG
The flights are avaliable on both lifemiles and United awards so guess il use lifemiles to book them( I was curious to compare the extra taxes and surcharges portions charged between the NZ and AV programs tho)

Xiaotung

Yes, that was my experience as well. A few months ago I asked them to check more than 10 routes on different Star airlines between Asia and Europe, only 2 of them were available for redemption. I had made sure all these flights were available on UA/AV/NH before I called. It seems they only want you to use your points on NZ metals which require tons more points.

As a data point, I just transferred all my Westpac points to KrisFlyer here in Australia which enabled me to book 3 Business seats from AKL to SIN on SQ. If I transferred the same amount to Airpoints, I would be lucky to get away with 2 Economy seats on NZ. The any seat any flight redemption is really a joke.

PacificTwo

Xiaotung - thanks for reporting the search results from talking to the NZ agents. I have thought about this redemption before but had never got far enough to actually start asking questions.

A question on this: were you looking for a single seat? I ask because I know there are several cases of some *A airlines only seeing (N-1) seats when the operating carrier has released N seats to starnet. For example, when trying to use US miles to book LX business class, you would run into this "one less seat available than advertised" problem. United by contrast had access to the actual number of seats released by LX.

Also, I wonder whether you'd have any success asking for a long-sell/manual request of the seats?

Finally, I also wonder how well NZ's agents are trained on this. Given the absolutely awful value of *A awards, I suspect agents could go a long time without having anyone actually calling to ticket such an award!

Xiaotung

I was requesting 2 seats but I thought about that. When they said they were not available I also asked them to check if at least 1 seat was. And the answer was no.

I don't know what you mean by manual request of seats but as far as I am aware there is only one procedure in place. I questioned why these seats were available from other Star airlines, assuming they used the same inventory. One agent went back to check with a supervisor and the answer was the inventory was provided by Star and they had no control and they were not blocking anything. The problem was not due to training as they can book some flights but not others and I have tried a few agents.

But you are right. Many agents are not properly trained to handle this including some Premium Team members. One of them actually told me the procedure was they can only request a seat without knowing if it's available or not and the Star team will get back to me in 48 hours. I laughed at her and told her it was unbelievable in this day and age I would have to wait 48 hours to book a reward ticket. How could anyone successfully book a ticket in this manner! And she hung up on me. I have tried to stay away with Airpoints for a few years now but I had never experienced customer service as bad as this. Anyway, had no time to complain. Called again and the next agent was very competent.

PacificTwo

OK, thanks and you were obviously well prepared!

Basically a way of agents requesting an award seat even if they aren't shown on Starnet. MatthewLAX published some of his history with US Airways when they were blocking LH - on his blog. The manual sell request worked for a short while but ultimately US prohibited agents doing this.

I have no knowledge of what system NZ agents actually use, but thought the question may be valid.

Given NZ's structure for *A award costs (per segment and high APD costs), I would assume they are more than adequately prepared to cover the costs of partner F reimbursements. I believe the latest versions of revenue management software allow airlines specific control over what *A airlines they allow access to their award inventories. So perhaps it's TG or NH specifically blocking NZ requests? Or maybe it is just a convenient IT issue that NZ has decided not to fix.