Air New Zealand Air Points - Problem with Mileage Credit

Hi,
Nov / Dec 2003 my Girlfriend and I flew
from London to Auckland using the Air NZ
Companion Business Class Fare. We payed
around 2.600 EUR per ticket. The booking
class mentioned on the Ticket is "Z",
which is a reduced Business Class Fare.

We are both *G members with Lufthansa
and wanted to use the roughly 60.000
* Miles to redeem our *G Status.

After we returned we found out that the
Miles were not credited. After doing
some investigation with Miles&More we
where told that there is no Mileage
Credit for the "Z" Class !!!!

Of course that was mentioned nowhere
on the Air NZ Webpage neither on the
Booking Confirmation.

Of course we are quite angry about that
as we would have chosen another Airline
if we knew that in advance. Furthermore
it is almost impossible for us to talk
to anyone from Air NZ here in Europe as
they only refer us to LH Miles&More.

Has anyone heard that before ?
What to do ?

Marcus

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by marcus67:
Hi,
&lt;snip&gt;
After we returned we found out that the miles were not credited. After doing some investigation with Miles&More we where told that there is no Mileage Credit for the "Z" Class !!!!

Of course that was mentioned nowhere on the Air NZ Webpage neither on the Booking Confirmation.

Of course we are quite angry about that as we would have chosen another Airline if we knew that in advance. Furthermore it is almost impossible for us to talk to anyone from Air NZ here in Europe as they only refer us to LH Miles&More.

Has anyone heard that before ?
What to do ?

Marcus</font>

If you are crediting miles to a LH Miles&More a account, its LH you have to talk to. You are in the LH freq flyer programme, not Air NZ. LH decide what fare bucket class get points, not Air NZ. You haver to look at LH's conditions for Miles&More. Its nothing to do with Air NZ


[This message has been edited by Mwenenzi (edited Jan 15, 2004).]

marcus67, sorry to hear about your dilemna.

If LH Miles&More doesn't give credit for Z Class on AirNZ, but another *A frequent flyer programme does, then it should be possible to get the 'credit' for the flights (in this case nothing) reversed from Miles & More and put into another programme. I understand that a facility exists to do this if you mistakenly credit a flight to the wrong FFP, though I could be wrong.

I seem to remember discussion on this board a few months ago about Z fares and whether they are eligible for mileage credit, and IIRC the consensus was that they are. Try doing a search...

I've found a couple of threads on the subject:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum7/HTML/000635.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum7/HTML/000661.html

Looks like they should be valid for accruing miles...

mad_atta beat me to it

marcus has cross-posted to LH and * A forums http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/rolleyes.gif

[This message has been edited by Kiwi Flyer (edited Jan 15, 2004).]

Thank you for your help so far.

Sorry for the Cross post but I was not
shure where to ask.

I have escalated that thing now with
LH Miles & More. I hope they do not want
to treat two SEN / *G like that.

Marcus

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by marcus67:
Thank you for your help so far.

Sorry for the Cross post but I was not
shure where to ask.

I have escalated that thing now with
LH Miles & More. I hope they do not want
to treat two SEN / *G like that.

Marcus</font>

Best of luck in getting it sorted. Welcome to FT http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Mwenenzi:
LH decide what fare bucket class get points, not Air NZ. You haver to look at LH's conditions for Miles&More. Its nothing to do with Air NZ
</font>

Wrong -- it has a lot to do with Air NZ.

LH didn't just decide they no longer like the letter Z. What likely happened is Air NZ stopped paying LH for the miles LH members received for flying Air NZ flights on Z fares.

Airline programs don't give you miles or points when you use partners just because the airline likes you -- it's because the airline gets compensated by the partner in some fashion.

So it does have a lot to do with NZ -- they stopped paying NZ. LH responded by no longer giving miles.

Therefore, (by airnzboy's reasoning in the post below) this directive has come from NZ :

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum7/HTML/000735.html

Of course, contacting NZ on this matter is probably futile. So if you can't persuade LH to credit (i.e. pay for) the miles flown on NZ in the interest of good customer relations, then your only other hope would be see if any other *A program you are already enrolled in might. Perhaps another program might have a different arrangement with NZ over Z fares Or just be slower to react to NZ cutoff of payments for Zs.

Hi,
I think you are right.
We are just the idiots in the middle between
them two. - Air NZ did not tell us about it
and LH neither. That is a great way to
satisfy customers.

Marcus

Hi,
after some discussions with Miles&More we
finally found some very helpful people at
LH and Miles&More. Not only did they credit
our miles they even changed the rules here
so that AirNZ "Z" will be credited for
LH customers - even retroactive.

Marcus

A great result marcus67

Glad to hear this was resolved, marcus67. It sounds as though the problem was at LH's end, then?

The problem mainly was that AirNZ did not
pay LH for the Bonus. I do not know how
they resolved that: Either LH pays for
the miles themselfes or AirNZ changed their
mind ...

Anyway, good that it was changend and even
better that someone else might get their
miles, too.

Marcus

When you say "the bonus" do you mean the extra miles for business class compared to economy?

No, with bonus I mean all the miles credited.
Sorry, I picked the wrong word here.