Air New Zealand Air Points - I want to defect - will NZ comp status?

Hi,

After being QF Platinum with Partner Gold for the past 4 years I would like to jump ship and give NZ a go.

I would be looking at doing 10-15 SYD-AKL/ WLG trips in J, 3-4 SYD-USA trips in Y and probably one RTW in J a year if everything works out.

Do I just give the NZ FF desk a call and ask them or am I wasting my time?

Thanks http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

Nonce, why would you want to move if you have lifetime status on QF? Or is it because you already have lifetime so can spread the miles around?

Your plans are enough to maintain top tier, Gold Elite. Doubt if you would be comped that though. Let us know how you get on.

Good question... if it were any other airline that you had status with, I would say that you were wasting your time. As it is the arch-rival Qantas and you are based in Australia, a market NZ would love to grow, perhaps you have a chance, though my gut feeling is that it's still a long shot. If you have some proof of your travel patterns that you could fax to them (i.e. your FF statement) showing relevant travel in markets that NZ competese in (i.e. trans-Tasman or trans-Pacific, as opposed to Australia domestic or Australia to Asia or Europe) that would probably help your case.

You could always try to get AC or UA to comp your status, as they are far more likely to play ball (if you play up the travel to/from the US angle) and their FF programmes are much more generous anyway. The only real downside of this if you're mostly flying NZ is that you won't have any way of upgrading your NZ flights, though what I do is credit all my NZ flights to AC, while maintaining an NZ AirPoints account that I dump Westpac Altitude credit card points into to use for upgrades. NZ's systems will allow you to credit your flight to a partner programme while using AirPoints to upgrade it, which is handy!

Let us know what you decide to do and how you get on. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif BTW, if you're going to be flying SYD-WLG in J with any regularity, you're definitely better off with NZ - QF's business product on the 737s is a disgrace.

United will almost certainly comp you to PE (*Gold). Just fax your QF statements to UA. Maybe useful as a fallback position to NZ (or maybe you would find UA miles more generous as a FF plan).

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by mad_atta:
You could always try to get AC or UA to comp your status</font>

UA will absolutely do it, but only to mid-tier. (I did this myself last year). AC will absolutely not do it.

Just put a nicely worded letter together telling them that you want to move your business to NZ, giving them an idea of the business you can move across and attach a copy of your last 2 or 3 QF statements to the letter and send it to the Airpoints service centre and you should be comped.