Air New Zealand Air Points - Air NZ let down by ground staff (again)

Got off trans-Tasman flight into Akl which was excellent and on-time and ran across to domestic terminal to try and get on an impeding departing flight to regional centre, 90mins prior to the one I was booked on.

Went straight to the Koru/Gold check-in, waited in line, got to the counter and was told "sorry you have to go to ticketing".

This is on a FULL economy fare - every other airline in the world could change flight at check-in, for some reason AirNZ you have to go and line up at ticketing - of course the inevitable happened, a queue at ticketing, time genius logged into his computer flight closed and gone.

It never ceases to amaze me that Air NZ cabin staff and service is fantastic, yet ground staff are hopeless and provide no level of service or help...

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by CorporateFlyer:
Went straight to the Koru/Gold check-in, waited in line, got to the counter and was told "sorry you have to go to ticketing".

This is on a FULL economy fare - every other airline in the world could change flight at check-in, for some reason AirNZ you have to go and line up at ticketing
</font>

No, not "every other airline in the world" can change a flight at check in. Just every reasonably modern and customer focused airline can.

The Air NZ check in counters can pretty much only check in pax, Anything else requires a trip to the Air NZ ticketing desk. At times my visits to the Air NZ ticketing desks strongly resembled dealing with dodgy airlines in some 3rd world African or East European countries. Several times I've had to wait while the NZ ticketing desk agent painfully wrote or reissued complicated tickets *by hand*.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by CorporateFlyer:

Went straight to the Koru/Gold check-in, waited in line, got to the counter and was told "sorry you have to go to ticketing".
</font>

The NZ check-in staff have always put me on an earlier plane whenever I have asked at the 'provincial' airports (WLG, CHC, DUD, Nelson, PMR) so this sounds a bit odd.
I have never tried this in AKL though!

When my partner flew SYD-WLG-BHE a few days ago and arrived in WLG earlier than scheduled, he asked to be put on an earlier flight and the check-in agent was happy to do it... until he discovered that the earlier flight was completely full (Friday afternoon flight). Maybe this is an AKL thing?