Air New Zealand Air Points - A question for AirNZBoy (or others)

Hi,

I am NZ Silver and my wife is NZ Gold. We are having a baby in February and will want to fly LON-LAX-AKL with the baby in April (when we return to NZ from a stint in London). I am planning to buy a one-way J ticket in London, including a stop over in Los Angeles to break up the flight for the baby (and for us!), and to get a companion ticket for my wife. I understand that this will be treated as two flights when calculating the number of Air Points required for the companion ticket.

My question is, can we do what I am planning (ie can we take the baby when also using a companion ticket)?

Also, is there any disadvantage to asking for the seats in J with a bassinet (ie reduced legroom, entertainment service, window visibility etc)?

Thanks in advance for your help - this is our first baby so I am a complete novice about the issues of flying with it.

Hi - First of all, congrats for the recent arrival http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

You can take the baby, but you'll have to pay the infant fare - 10% of J fare.

I'll leave it to someone else to answer regarding bassinet seats, as the company prefers customers to fly in the premium classes, rather than employees! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif



------------------
*Any information given in the email is my personal opinion and not the opinion of my employer.

Thanks AirNZBoy.

Will I have to baby the infant fare when the baby will only be c.3 months old? I have searched the Q&A in the airnz.co.nz site but can only find references to child fares when the child is >=2. It will only be about £160 so I'm not too worried, but there's no point paying if we don't have to.

Any passenger who has not yet reached their second birthday has to pay the infant fare (usually 10% of the adult fare).

Passengers between their second and twelfth birthday pay child fare (either 67% or 75%, depending on the fare rules), and twelfth birthday upwards is adult fare. Hope this clarifies http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif



------------------
*Any information given in the email is my personal opinion and not the opinion of my employer.

Impending congratulations! Go for the bassinete seats. Your baby will probably sleep for 90% of the time. Feeding (swallowing) on take-off and landing will help them keep their ears clear. Nice idea to take the break in LA. We flew SYD-LHR with only a 1-hr stop in BKK when our first child was just 6 weeks old. It went way, way better than we could have expected. Enjoy!

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by gratn:
Also, is there any disadvantage to asking for the seats in J with a bassinet (ie reduced legroom, entertainment service, window visibility etc)?

</font>

There are two bassinet positions in J, one on the top deck (seats 7AB I think), and one downstairs in the middle seats (16DEF I think). Obviously the downstairs seats won't have much of a view, but otherwise either choice is fine - some people find the bulkhead seats have a little less legroom, but I've never noticed it. Service and inflight entertainment will be exactly the same. If I were you I'd go for the upstairs seats as you'll have the window and the side lockers. Enjoy your flights http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

Cheers, Zac

Thanks all for the tips - they are very useful.

I didn't like being upstairs last time I flew AKL-LON in J, but only because the service seemed below par. My wife loves the window, so I think we'll give it another go. As long as the baby sleeps everything else will probably seem wonderful.