Air New Zealand Air Points - Negative FFP balances make unloyalty programmes

I know that some of you mentioned months ago getting letters about the new annual fee. I wondered whether they'd forgotten me. I still wonder why it's taken this long. I've finally received a letter saying that my account balance as of Dec will be negative.

They go on to say "You can avoid this by paying the fee by credit card at the Airpoints members' section of www.airnewzealand.com.au."
Yeah. Of course. Definitely. I'll get on that right away. :p

Let's see. If I fly Star Alliance, I can either credit my travel for free to any of a dozen other programmes, or I can pay to credit it to NZ. Gee, tough choice.

As it has negative balances, I guess it's the first time I've been a member of an unloyalty programme.

The so-called Kiwi proud does hurt.

I know that some of you mentioned months ago getting letters about the new annual fee. I wondered whether they'd forgotten me. I still wonder why it's taken this long. I've finally received a letter saying that my account balance as of Dec will be negative.

They go on to say "You can avoid this by paying the fee by credit card at the Airpoints members' section of www.airnewzealand.com.au."
Yeah. Of course. Definitely. I'll get on that right away. :p

Let's see. If I fly Star Alliance, I can either credit my travel for free to any of a dozen other programmes, or I can pay to credit it to NZ. Gee, tough choice.

As it has negative balances, I guess it's the first time I've been a member of an unloyalty programme.


Sorry , but it is a "frequent" flyer programme - how frequently do you fly ? If you check the link below you will see that you can avoid the fee by making a flight - even on the non-earning SMART fares . If you have made not one flight in the last 12 months then I don't think NZ will be too worried about losing your loyalty because you are not a frequent flyer - it is a loyalty programme and loyalty is a two way street

http://www.airnz.co.nz/airpoints/airpoints_member_information/programme_fees_nz.htm

For Airpoints™ members who have not flown on a paid Air New Zealand flight for 12 months, an annual account fee of $30 will be charged. This fee will be reduced to $20 if you opt to receive your Airpoints newsletter, Highpoints, by email, and choose not to receive posted statements.

Ways to Avoid the Annual Account Fee

Always provide your Airpoints membership number when booking an Air New Zealand flight, even on our Smart Saver fares. Although our lowest fares won't earn you Airpoints Dollars, they will exempt you from the annual account fee.

Sorry , but it is a "frequent" flyer programme - how frequently do you fly ?

Depends on how you classify "frequently". Usually about 100k miles a year in total, but not to NZ very often and not with NZ very often, since the MEL-AKL-LAX flights went away.

Let me contrast the ways things work with other airlines. I'd earned a fair bit on AA just with internet offers. This somewhat encouraged me to fly AA, which I recently did and was pleasantly surprised. That encourages me to fly AA some more in future. I'd earned some pts on NZ from the rugby tipping thing a couple of years ago. Now they are going to take those away from me and "charge me" points if I fly NZ after Dec. This discourages me from flying NZ.

This seems to be an odd way to do business. Even Qantas, with one of the worst FF schemes around, tried the annual charge thing and gave it up as a bad idea.

Hi Kremmen

Fair enough , you have your opinion on this and NZ obviously have a different one - while I understand your displeasure at the fee I am sure NZ believe it wont cost them too many customers ( at least not ones that they consider worth pursuing ) - they examined the whole company top to bottom when they rebuilt it after the near total collapse and one of the things they paid particular attention to was the FF programme - I guess that they felt their database was too cluttered with inactive members and I suspect the fee is actually meant to annoy inactive members enough to spur them to terminate their memberships enabling the programme to focus on what the airline sees as genuine frequent customers .

If you don't mind me asking - I am curious why you bothered to have an NZ membership as well as a UA one , particularly since you rarely fly on NZ - I have never quite understood why someone would have multiple memberships within the same alliance - is there an advantage that I am missing ?

If you don't mind me asking - I am curious why you bothered to have an NZ membership as well as a UA one , particularly since you rarely fly on NZ - I have never quite understood why someone would have multiple memberships within the same alliance - is there an advantage that I am missing ?

I have had membership of about 15 FF programmes over the years and it's the first I've had a negative balance in. "Displeasure" is going too far. I think it's funny and silly, but it doesn't affect me either way.

Multiple memberships is simply because of the massive number of offers that are specific to one single airline. I originally joined Airpoints just to get the rugby tipping points.

I am a member of both CO and NW's schemes. There have been bonuses which applied to one and not the other, despite their close partnership. I am a member of QF & AA & BA's schemes. They are all partners, but they all have fares which don't accrue points on any other than their own scheme. They also have partners who credit to only one of them: Idine used to credit to AA only and now includes BA, but doesn't include QF. OpinionPlace and various other web sites have been AA only. I've taken cars on test drives for points on QF and BA that were specific to one programme.

I have SQ membership because they were offering double points and a 10k bonus to Aussies at one point ... that meant a single one-way trip Europe-Australia on SQ was worth 30k pts in Krisflyer or 10k in any other Star programme.

thanks for explanation - makes a lot of sense .

You have to wonder if one day we will see a single alliance FF programme eg one membership across all OW or all *A airlines - I suppose it would take the edge of being able to shop around the schemes - but it would also save the problem of being left with little "rats and mice" balances in several separate programmes with none of them individually being enough to really do anything with . Since I live in Belgium at the moment and will probably only go back to NZ every couple of years I am trying to work out at the moment whether I should join LH M&M or stick with NZ , although of course I will be getting 20 airpoint dollars deducted from my balance each year when not flying them (sigh!)

A single alliance FF programme would be great, but I don't ever see it happening. It's too sensible and convenient. :(

Airlines like to try to target certain people and extract extra money from others. Just look at the discount pricing that happens in one country but not another even for the same airline on the same route. They like being able to offer deals to some travellers and not others, because they know that most people won't bother to join another programme to take advantage of it.

I personally don’t think Air New Zealand will rescind this non-flyer fee – it’s just not their style unfortunately.

Obviously they want to focus on providing for their frequent flyers – which is fine, if only they did a good job of it. I always have great difficulty in getting suggestions across to the airline about how it could improve the existing benefits for tier members at low/no cost to them as whenever you think you are getting somewhere you seem to be ex-communicated.

Air New Zealand employ a wonderful email survey system which if they wanted to could be used to run a census of the entire tier flyer population with Airpoints.

Instead they run non-representational focus groups - often respondents don’t know how much they need/would miss a benefit until the've had it and then lost it. Focus groups have found that pax prefer the 777 Y 3-3-3 configuration, were also used when establishing the Pacific Premium product and found that Koru Club lounges were essential when introducing ExpressClass (hence the increased investment into them).

Focus groups have found that pax prefer the 777 Y 3-3-3 configuration

sorry , you have confused me , you would prefer 3-4-3 like EK ?

sorry , you have confused me , you would prefer 3-4-3 like EK ?No - I would rather either 2-5-2 or 3-4-2. It's a moot point regardless as I'm not ever likely to fly Y on a 777 anyway. A much better example of where focus groups have done badly is the configuration of Pacific Premium class.

Instead they run non-representational focus groups - often respondents don’t know how much they need/would miss a benefit until the've had it and then lost it. Focus groups have found that pax prefer the 777 Y 3-3-3 configuration, were also used when establishing the Pacific Premium product and found that Koru Club lounges were essential when introducing ExpressClass (hence the increased investment into them).

Out of those 3 examples, I'm definitely with the focus groups on the 3+3+3 config and the concept of simple onboard domestic service backed up by improved Koru Clubs. Re the Y+ product, I'm going to have to wait and see.

I guess my point is, the fact that the focus groups deliver results that don't always agree with your own view doesn't necessarily mean that they are non-representative.

So you think that it is better to run (quite expensive) focus groups instead of just sending out a (cheap) email survey – which is more representational and will provide more responses which are of value to the airline ?

I actually agree with the whole Express concept (but not that the “ExpressClass” branding has long been ditched by NZ) but think that they would get more accurate results, and probably pickup a few concepts on the way if they asked more/all of their customers.

The average American company saves over US$7,000 for each employee suggestion that is enacted and by actively soliciting suggestions from their staff and frequent customers they’ll find there is a whole lot of savings/improvement’s that can be made.

So you think that it is better to run (quite expensive) focus groups instead of just sending out a (cheap) email survey – which is more representational and will provide more responses which are of value to the airline ?

Why is a survey necessarily more representational?

lol x 100

Why is a survey necessarily more representational?
Because it gives everyone in the target membership a chance to respond...

Because it gives everyone in the target membership a chance to respond...

There are lots of problems with that. The worst is that your cheap survey will inevitably be written in such a way that respondents are thinking "I don't like any of those answers". Plenty of people won't bother responding. A good idea will be drowned out by all the other sheep. Each question will be taken in isolation and, much moreso than in a discussion, often respondents don’t know how much they need/would miss a benefit until they've had it and then lost it.

Focus groups allow diverse groups of people to interact, understand each other's views and reach some conclusions.

And I agree with them that 777 Y 3-3-3 configuration is vastly preferable to 2-5-2. (On a lightly booked long-haul, lie-down sleeping areas area fantastic. When travelling with a companion, having a spare seat between you is great. When travelling with 2 companions, it's good to be able to sit together. In all cases 3-3-3 gives 3 areas per row which work for that goal, while 2-5-2 only gives 1.)

Of course there are lots of problems with poorly written surveys - but a well written survey would not have any of the problems you describe and would be more representational. NZ have in the past had quite high response rates to it's email surveys and if the body copy links the text together then each questions will not be taken in isolation. Plenty of opportunity for written misc comments, etc completes the survey.

Take the Pacific Premium focus groups and then look at the end product - Seems no-one bought up that sharing skinny armrests is a major annoyance when flying coach...

Of course there are lots of problems with poorly written surveys - but a well written survey would not have any of the problems you describe and would be more representational.

You described email surveys as cheaper than focus groups. Your cheap email survey will almost certainly be badly written. If it's done really well, it almost certainly won't be cheap. (Though in the context of running an airline, either method is inexpensive.)

What the airline wants is the best result. Is more representational necessarily better?? Just look at the president of the USA for a counter-example.

I'm no statistician, but I do understand that email surveys and the like are not necessarily more representative than a well chosen focus group as the people (or _type_ of people) who will respond are "self-selecting" and will certainly not be representative of the wider market - particularly when there is a prize or some other 'pull' to complete the survey.

For example, look at the star alliance surveys overrun with flyertalkers who were not selected to take part...

Saying that, the onboard surveys are another weak point: I seem to get them every third or 4th longhaul sector - do we know how they are supposed to randomly choose victims, or is it just anyone the ISD takes a fancy too? (or who is awake/approachable/friendly...)

Sorry , but it is a "frequent" flyer programme - how frequently do you fly ?

Same as Kremmen depends on what you class as frequent - Last year was over 160K miles. This year well over 100K. But only infrequently on Air NZ. When I do - it was First or Business.

This year I had enough points for 3 BC long haul tickets for my family and purchased my ticket - so spent several thousand of my $ not the companies. To get free tickets for family members, they need Airpoints accounts. This is why the accounts are needed - not for me - for them. They don't fly often on paid tickets, so will all have negative balances. As Air NZ doesn't count "Free" tickets when waving the fee.

If they had family accounts like ANA, then this wouldn't be a problem - we would consolidate, allow Air NZ to save money and stop having to send out a lot of paper. Joint Credit card schemes say primary card holder gets all the points - so don't see what the difference would be. They can easily tell when the primary card holder is flying and already have partner Gold Elite cards. Why not have family accounts - that would clear the books of small accounts in a hurry.

Three reasons why I stay with Air NZ.

1) I am a Kiwi - but this will only go so far
2) 3 Return Trips to Singapore on SQ will keep Gold Status
3) Points don't expire so can build up again for a family holiday.

If they had family accounts like ANA, then this wouldn't be a problem - we would consolidate, allow Air NZ to save money and stop having to send out a lot of paper.

the fee is reduced if you get your statements online in recognition of the paper saving for the airline - and it saves you getting tonnes of crap mailed out to you .

I am interested in your comments about NH - never heard of this before, does any other airline operate family programmes rather than individual ones ? Do you just have to reside at the same address or do you have to have the same surname as well ?

I am interested in your comments about NH - never heard of this before, does any other airline operate family programmes rather than individual ones ? Do you just have to reside at the same address or do you have to have the same surname as well ?

BA does for its North American programme. (Have to reside at same address in that case.)