Air New Zealand Air Points - ExpertFlyer.com now has NZ Award Inventory

Hello all,

We just wanted to let you know that ExpertFlyer now displays NZ Award inventory:

NZ 6
AKL 11/13/07 7:15 PM
LAX 11/13/07 10:25 AM 772
74% / 16m I0 X9

NZ 2
AKL 11/13/07 11:00 PM
LAX 11/13/07 1:55 PM 744
52% / 24m I2 X9

Since they are hidden classes, be sure to specify NZ as the airline and the I and X classes in the class fields in the search.

In addition, ExpertFlyer displays the U and E Premium Economy buckets:

NZ 6
AKL 11/13/07 7:15 PM
LAX 11/13/07 10:25 AM 772
74% / 16m C0 D0 Z0 J0 U4 E4 O0 Y7 B7 M7 H7 Q7 V7 W7 T7 L7 S7 G7 K7 P0

As always the full list of airlines we have award and upgrade inventory for can be found here (http://www.expertflyer.com/popup/classes.jsp) Enjoy.

Does this include the Z and R class inventory which Gold Elites can access?

Does this include the Z and R class inventory which Gold Elites can access?

Yes, as shown above Z is shown in the clear. R is a hidden class that will show up if you specify it in the search. Just so we document it properly, what is the exact difference between Z and R? We were under the impression that Z is the upgrade class.

Does this include the Z and R class inventory which Gold Elites can access?

Ok folks, here is the full and complete Award and Upgrade booking class listing straight from the word of an NZ agent:

Z - Business - Upgrades using Airpoints
R - Business - Complimentary Upgrades for Gold Elites
I - Business - Awards using Airpoints & Complimentary upgrades for Golds
O - Premium Economy & Complimentary upgrades into Premium Economy
X - Economy - Awards using Airpoints

Z and O show up with all other booking classes, R,I, and X require the class to be specified in the class boxes during the Flight Availability search. Enjoy.

This is excellent news, EF Voice! ^

Gone are the days of fiddling around on the ANA website, I wish this would have been possible earlier, could have saved me a lot of time this year...

This and the new ability to search for LX award inventory, will definitely make me upgrade from a monthly to an annual subscription soon. :)

Keep up the good work!

By the way:

What does it mean if the same fare bucket is displayed twice or even three times?

This seems to be the case on a lot of NZ flights on the LHR-HKG/LAX/AKL route. Examples I'm finding are:

I0 I0 I0 X9 X9 X0

I0 I0 X9 X9

I2 I2 X9 X9

I2 I1 X9 X9

etc.

By the way:

What does it mean if the same fare bucket is displayed twice or even three times?

This seems to be the case on a lot of NZ flights on the LHR-HKG/LAX/AKL route. Examples I'm finding are:

I0 I0 I0 X9 X9 X0

I0 I0 X9 X9

I2 I2 X9 X9

I2 I1 X9 X9

etc.

What Flight Availability query are you doing to produce those results?

What Flight Availability query are you doing to produce those results?

For example:

Depart: HKG
Arrive: AKL
Depart: 11/15/07 +/- 3 days
Airline: NZ
Class Codes: I X

will result in

I0 I0 X9 X0 for 11/16/07 on NZ38
I0 I0 X9 X0 for 11/14/07 on NZ38
I5 I3 X9 X0 for 11/12/07 on NZ38

Another search further into the future will get similar results - pretty much on any date:

I2 I2 X9 X9 for 09/12/08 on NZ38

First I thought it could mean the availability for both legs of the NZ38 flight which flies LHR-HKG-AKL with one flight number.


But if we take the results from above and try as one flight LHR-AKL and both individual legs, we get:

all on NZ38, departing LHR on 11/11/07

LHR-AKL: I1 X9
LHR-HKG: I1 X9
HKG-AKL: I5 I3 X9 X0 (departing 11/12/07)


Don't know whether it is related or not, but there are several NZ38 flights on the HKG-AKL route that are flying back in time on Frequentflyer:

NZ 38 listed in the result tab of 11/13/07
Depart HKG 11/12/07 7:00 PM
Arrive AKL 11/11/07 10:45 AM

NZ 38 listed in the result tab of 11/14/07
Depart HKG 11/15/07 7:00 PM
Arrive AKL 11/15/07 10:45 AM

and vice versa

NZ39 listed in the result tab of 11/12/07
Departing AKL 11/11/07 11:55 PM
Arriving HKG 11/10/07 6:15 AM

I hope I'll be able to catch one of those one day! :eek:

goliath, thank you for the feedback. AFAIK it looks like this is a problem only with the HKG-AKL route as others don't show the double class issue (SFO-AKL, LAX-AKL for example). The issue is that the NZ host is actually returning flight information for NZ 38 twice, when our software parses the results, it results in one flight listing with two of the same class. We will let our GDS know of the bug so they can track it down with NZ.

As for the flights that travel backwards in time, we aren't seeing that on ExpertFlyer:

For an 11/13/07 request:
NZ 38
HKG 11/13/07 7:00 PM
AKL 11/14/07 10:45 AM

If you notice any other issue, please contact our help desk directly at customercare@expertflyer.com

Thank you,
EFV

Ok, we figured out and worked around the "double class" issue. What is happening is that on certain routes, NZ has business rules in their host that when certain classes are requested that it will return the availability not only for the day requested, but the day before as well. We adjusted our software to handle this, and now a search like this:

Departing HKG on 04/30/08 5:00 AM for AKL
Flying NZ on booking class I

Will produce results like this:

NZ 38
HKG 04/30/08 6:10 PM
AKL 05/01/08 9:00 AM
I2

NZ 38
HKG 04/29/08 6:10 PM
AKL 04/28/08 9:00 AM
I0

Yes, the arrival date is wrong on the 4/29 flight, that is how we're getting it from NZ, however the departure date is correct so just ignore it until they fix it. If you have any additional questions please let us know.

Thanks for your support,
-EFV

Has anyone managed to get NZ I, X, U or E inventory to display using Expertflyer during the last day or so?

The saved queries I have which used to work no longer do so.

Has anyone managed to get NZ I, X, U or E inventory to display using Expertflyer during the last day or so?

The saved queries I have which used to work no longer do so.

Still works for me, if you have problems email EF support, they'll help you out.

Still works for me, if you have problems email EF support, they'll help you out. After a couple more hours of failures, the NZ class specific queries started magically working again ...

I've been doing queries on ExpertFlyer and can't find any business class award availability at all--either close in (i.e., February/March) or far out (November/December), or random dates in between, on flights to or from Los Angeles or San Francisco to Auckland or Nadi (yes, I know they are about to end service to NAN). I can see that flights seem pretty full in February so the close-in results don't surprise me. But the fact that there is never any availability makes me wonder if anything else is going on. Has NZ has stopped releasing I inventory?

A related question is this: are awards from other *A carriers booked into I?

If you're wondering what I'm up to, it's that I'm trying to use up some UA miles. Should I keep plugging away until I find something?

Yes I is used for business class.
Yes business class awards on NZ between USA and NZ are very hard to get, and often go as soon as they are released.
Yes keep checking back. Be flexible with dates, routing, going on separate flights (if more than one of you), don't forget about HNL-AKL and LAX-APW/TBU/RAR-AKL flights, pick mid-week dates not during school or other holidays, etc.

Thank you, Kiwi Flyer. I was starting to wonder if I was looking in vain. Thanks too for the routing tips.

oops - forgot to suggest YVR-AKL also

I don't know where to go now to see the seating maps on NZ. I used to make dummy bookings on the multicity booking site. Now they no longer have the chose a seat function button I have started using expert flyer. However on a flight later this month from LAX-LHR expert flyer shows zero availability in all business classes but the seat map in biz shows 8 unoccupied seats. Is this just because these seats haven't been allocated to booked passengers that they are empty and it does not relate to the J0 C0 Z0 that you see? (sorry to be a bit clueless)

Correct. Seat maps are a poor indicator of loads.