Air New Zealand Air Points - Choice of 3 'bad' seats: which one?

Hi everyone,

I was very happy to have my points UG request honoured for my AKL-LAX flight on Tuesday. Yesterday (72 hours in advance) they said 'no, it's full' but luckily today it cleared (I've got a connection to NY so it'll be a long journey).

Now, the only downside is that I have a choice of 3 seats none of which are great:

Upperdeck last row 14, lower deck 18 or 19.

Which one would you choose? I kinda like the upperdeck idea (I don't fly business very often) but read on the seating thread that recline in row 14 is limited. How bad is it and how noisy is it with the galley/lavs so close?

Any tips welcome!
Fliar

Congrats on the upgrade. ^

Are the seats available window or aisle (or dreaded centre seat downstairs)? To me that would be the deciding factor. (Note row 19 also limited recline.)

Why do you only have a choice of 3 seats
The Availability tool shows plenty more seat choices for the 24/08 NZ2/6

Thanks for your replies!

I have a choice of aisle or window both on the UD and the LD. I much prefer window usually.

I guess availability is limited because it's an award ug seat? Maybe they're keeping the better seats for paying pax? I had a look with the availability tool and it shows c4 - that's only 4 seats, right? I've never quite worked out how to use this tool...

Maybe something better will come up at the airport.

Edited to add: just rang and they also had seat 7K. It was listed as 'less desirable' but our useful seating sticky says it's very private, only close to the cockpit door (which may cause some noise). I've taken that one for now. I hope it doesn't have much less legroom like the first row in the Boeings NZ uses to HKG. Good choice you think?

C4 means there are at least 4 seats avaliable in that fare class.

If you want to see the seatmap of ava seats go to http://flyaow.com/classamex.htm and put in the info, then select your flight, then you can select seats for this trip.

I take it your on NZ6. NZ6 on 24 Aug currently has 7J, 14AB (Upper) and 16AJK 16/17/18 DEF ,19K and 18K avaliable.

C4 means there are at least 4 seats avaliable in that fare class.

If you want to see the seatmap of ava seats go to http://flyaow.com/classamex.htm and put in the info, then select your flight, then you can select seats for this trip.

I take it your on NZ6. NZ6 on 24 Aug currently has 7J, 14AB (Upper) and 16AJK 16/17/18 DEF ,19K and 18K avaliable.

Woaw, great tool - thanks!

Very strange why they only offered me the other seats - as you pointed out there are plenty of others available? Anyone willing to venture a guess?

Should I stick to 7K or are any of the others considerably better?

Fliar

Very strange why they only offered me the other seats - as you pointed out there are plenty of others available? Anyone willing to venture a guess?

I'm not suprised with the seating. I often don't get what i want the first time. Good thing after calling the gold line you can press 4 and instantly be connected to reservations.

Also within about 12 hours [might be more] it shows all the seats that have been given to pax without pre-assignments, giving an idea on loadings

The availability tool isn't an accurate reflection of what seats are available for assignment. Why? I don't know. My guess is that the seats that are showing available on A.T. but not on Air NZ's system are travel agents bookings where the agent has sent off a request for the seats and they've been confirmed but for some reason that hasn't generated across to the other CRS systems. :confused:

By the way, it's worth giving NZ a call if the booking class you want is showing 0 in A.T. but the next class up has 9 (ie you need W and it's showing W0 V9 T9). Sabre and other CRS's seem to have availability closed off to them when only 1 or 2 seats are available - possibly to prevent the same seat being "sold" at the same time in 2 different locations!

We know,
Luckily ITN is [in my experience] much more up to date and easier to use.