urww

Hey everyone!

It might be the matter has been discussed before over here, but my quick search didn't come with the results actually.

Has NZ ever release award seats in business class for partners? I'm pretty flexible in timing and routing (HKG-AKL or SIN-AKL), however found just nothing. Then I checked departures from tomorrow until late November 2016 on both routes and could not find a single date with C class availability for partners. Is that always like this?

I was using UA search tool (and it indeed shows plenty of Y availability on both routes).

Kamadan

You are correct, NZ very VERY rarely releases Business Award inventory to *A partners (somebody correct me if I am wrong, the booking class would be "R" in this case, C is a fairly high revenue Business fare class on NZ "I" class as corrected).

Some routes do have the odd availability, mainly to PVG, NRT and HNL, but assume it's almost always never for all other long-haul routes.

You might try your luck with SQ with SIN-AKL, alternatively TG usually releases a sizable amount of award inventory for HKG-BKK-AKL in Business and Economy.

Good luck.

urww

Kamadan, thank you for your response.

'C' - I meant the class of service, not particular booking class for a business award inventory.

Too bad PVG or NRT will not work for me. I was going to book an award for UA miles. They have fantastically sweet spot SEA -> AUNZ for 30,000 in J and 40,000 in F (though you basically can book F only on BKK-SYD route). PVG and NRT is North Asia and Japan zones, so an award would be significantly more expensive.

SQ don't allow partners to book C class awards on its longhaul routes. Until 3 months ago they limited restrictions to A380 and 77W C and F only, but since then they apply black out just on all longhaul routes no matter what aircraft is deployed.

How happy I was when I saw SIN-CHC is operated by 772 (which previously was ok to book C class through partners) and almost crying when learned new policy .

Looks like this is the last shelter for a struggled *A ffp heading to NZ . Though I tried to avoid TG old C like the plague I have no other options. Why do they operate a plane with such a terrible C class product on a really long flight to AKL, who knows...

Kamadan, as a NZ own ffp scheme member, do you have another award inventory and better availability or pretty much the same non existent awards in business?

LyingFlat

"I" class is the Star Alliance booking class for Business Awards. "R" class on NZ is for Airpoints upgrades and Airpoints Awards (long haul specials, companion fares etc.)

cavemanzk

For members of NZ own program, they have Any Seat reward policy.

Basically you can pick any seat on any flight operated by NZ, and book it with your points.

They use an currency based system for there rewards, e.g. 1APD = 1NZD. For example if I booked an AKL-SIN for $2000 (say the tax was $100), I would pay 1900 APD (Points) and $100NZD for the Tax.

Kamadan

NZ is a pure revenue-based FFP. We earn what we called "Airpoints Dollars" (seen shorthand in this forum as APD), which for all intents and purposes 1 APD = NZ$ 1

There are no separate award inventory per-se, rather whatever you see, you can pay with either APD or real $. Therefore there are effectively no blackout dates or restricted class availability.

Which also makes NZ one of the worst FFP in terms of earn/burn in the opinions of many, especially for international long-haul routes (and there are plenty of threads/complaints about this... so I won't go into it any more/further).

NZ hides "R" availability from services such as ExpertFlyer. Also it's the class used for NZ's own FFP when trying to use Recognition Upgrades (think GPU/SWU etc.) to upgrade into Business, or when trying to purchase an Airpoints Business Companion Fare Not sure if "I" class is shown on EF.

Kamadan

Thanks for the correction.

TravelingBear

Friday I booked Air NZ AKL-LAX in business class for two using UA. There were 3 days I noted that AZ had offerings. This was a change to an existing itinerary I had made some time back and was looking for a non-stop flight from AUS/NZ back to the states versus via ICN. The trip is at the end of April and when I chose seats I noticed there were only two seats that were occupied. Not saying they weren't any fuller in biz just noting what I saw.

Mwenenzi

UA forum http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...nited-com.html

urww

Kamadan, cavemanzk, thank you for providing me with basic intro into Air NZ ffp. I din't know it's already revenue based. I'm afraid it's something waiting all of us down the road with otter ffp-s as well.

Miracles of increasing competition =).