Oceanic814

Hello,

Grateful for any advice or suggestions here.
Looking at travelling from Auckland to Singapore in the first week of September.
I'm NZ Elite, no status on other airlines.

I have AirPoints and RUs for upgrades, not enough to purchase a full fare unfortunately.

It looks like my primary option booked through Air NZ is:

AKL to BNE on Air NZ
BNE to SIN on Ethiad

Some questions:

Looks like no Status Points on Ethiad, even booked through Air NZ, is that right?

Can I book the whole trip in economy and use RUs and/or AirPoints to upgrade to business?
If not, how about booking from AKL to BNE and trying to upgrade that with BNE to SIN booked in business?
Seems like not via the website, but let me know if there are any tricks there?

Are there any other Star Alliance options I should be looking at, either from AKL or BNE or some other routing?
I checked out Singapore Airlines from AKL to SIN, and although it's non-stop the business class fares look at least double the price of the above routing.

Appreciate any advice or suggestions.

zqsn5678

you earn no Status points on Ethiad

you can route through HKG/BKK/SYD/BNE/MEL/PER

air nz Complimentary upgrade are only valid on NZ service not on other airlines.

Australia is a lot of closer to SIN/Asia so the fare is cheaper, plus is a lot of more competitive there as well.

Kamadan

RUs can only be used on Air NZ ticketed AND operated services (as far as I know), this means on Air NZ metal/planes. So even a code-share is not enough.

If you want to take advantage of the possibility of using your RUs, I suggest flying to HKG, then taking a SIN flight from HKG.

That way, you can at least enjoy BP on a ~11 hour flight, as opposed to a somewhat meaningless AKL - BNE (or MEL or SYD) 3 hour flight in Business class.

Fares between HKG-SIN should be rather competitive.

Thai-Kiwi

Not always, a QF fare WLG-BKK was around $NZ1200 Y and $3900 J not long ago, the fares ex-SYD in $A were the same or more expensive when compared to the $NZ costs.

For the OP, if your intent is to burn RU/$AP to try and gain a biz seat to SIN then you'll need NZ flight to PVG/HKG/DPS(?) and thence onwards as noted above.

You could use a OneSmart card to 'buy' more $AP and top up your account a biz award outright - TG often has good availability for instance. Might need to check fees though.

Kiwi Flyer

When checking SQ fares, try the red-eye flight out of AKL, or ex-CHC. These are usually cheaper than the daytime flight out of AKL.

deaconknives

Another option would be the direct flight AKL to Denpasar, then a separate ticket on to SIN.
Being a 767 - only one RU to get to J each way.

mattyroo

Nope, no status points and the airpoints earned are pretty damn measly too - that's when AirNZ get around to crediting them.

I now have an Etihad account and am just about Gold with them already.

pbl22

Not quite sure why anyone expects status points to be earned on a non-*A airline. Imagine allowing one to qualify as *A Gold with little (or even no) flying on *A airlines.

zqsn5678

you can earn status points when flying with CX operated NZ coded flights between AKL and HKG.

pbl22

OK, I keep forgetting about that anomaly.