Australia, New Zealand & the South Pacific - Advice on ticketing for NZ/Aus Trip

Hi hi,

Can someone please help? I've gotten to the saturation point with all these choices to be made on how to get down under.

Our itinerary is (we hope): IAD to AKL then SYD to IAD in Aug for 2 weeks.

We are two travelers - one has enough miles to go Business Class on united and the other is willing to pay an upgradable fare (i think M class? but I'm not sure if the upgrade works on codeshare flights on air new zealand).

Anyway, then we hear that the coach fares are EXTREMELY low.

I know this is a really long trip, but is it worth taking advantage of these coach fares?

Looking for anyone's advice! Thanks!

Correct. You cannot use UA instruments to upgrade on flights operated by NZ. NZ does however participate in the *A mileage upgrade program, so you can use miles from several *A FFPs provided there is availability.

However, I don't recommend that. The upgradeable fare is rather high.

Your *A choices essentially boil down to

1) a UA fare via SYD. This is cheapest option and best case to get in business for both of you (except 1 in economy for the short trans-tasman flight).

or

2) economy fare/award on NZ direct. Unless you can afford paid business class then at least 1 of you will be flying economy.

NZ product is much better than UA on like for like basis. Economy is actually quite decent (for economy). But if you can confirm business class on UA then that will be more comfortable than economy on NZ. If you can't confirm business class then NZ in economy is fine.

On fares, both Australia and NZ have been very cheap at times. However not necessarily at the same time. It may be cheaper breaking into 2 fares, 1 IAD-SYD return and 1 SYD-AKL return (or SYD-AKL on 1 ticket and AKL-SYD on another to take advantage of cheaper fare ex-NZ).

Correct. You cannot use UA instruments to upgrade on flights operated by UA.I'm a oneworld person and know nothing about UA/*A, so I'm not sure if that's what KiwiFlyer meant to say?

There have certainly been some very low (comparatively) fares on offer recently - though whether they will be available for the dates you have in mind is hard to say. It used to be that if you could do it for less than US$2,000, you were getting a pretty good fare.

Business is obviously more comfortable than economy - whether it's worth it depends on how much you would save and the alternative uses you have for the miles? Are there enough miles for 2 economy awards? At the end of the day, you still get there and you can have the satisfaction of knowing how much you saved and look forward to spending it on something else.

I would second KiwiFlyer's excellent advice about looking at fares to SYD and then looking at fares to AKL separately. Do you have an itinerary in mind? I'm a NZ novice but I do know AKL doesn't usually get very high marks as a destination in and of itself - is it a jumping off point for elsewhere in NZ? Two weeks is a limited time and you can only do so much ...

I'm a oneworld person and know nothing about UA/*A, so I'm not sure if that's what KiwiFlyer meant to say?

Oops that should be operated by NZ.

I recently went thru this same deliberation. Ended up -- we bought upgradable economy tickets on United for IAD - LAX - SYD - AKL and same return. I waited until I saw NC availability on .bomb and therefore got IAD -LAX, LAX - SYD, and SYD - LAX confirmed in Business. And the flights to/from LAX-SYD are the new business seats so that should be nice.^

We are waitlisted for the LAX-IAD return flight home. Would hope the upgrade comes thru, but since it is a A320 we may not get it. We have reserved good econ+ seats for that. And really ... domestic first isn't that great anyway (I know others beg to differ).

We could not upgrade the SYD-AKL, AKL-SYD flights as they are Air NZ flights. They were, though, part of our itineray and we saved SEVERAL hundred dollars by going all the way to AKL over having our end point in SYD.

In other words it cost more for IAD-SYD than for IAD-SYD-AKL. So, it's kinda like getting free SYD-AKL roundtrip and saving money on IAD-SYD rt.

On another good note, because I am 1P, I called Air NZ and they reserved space+ seats for me and my traveling partner for their two flights. Space+ is like United's Econ+ in that it appears to be extra leg room, but not a higher class service. Still... I will always take extra leg room.

It was a hard decision and I really liked those low fares we were seeing in economy, but this is going to be alot of flying. As my miles are worth less as airlines keep changing redemption rules, I want to use them.

Trips in recent years have included direct to China and Johannesburg from IAD, but being that the NZL trip also includes a long US domestic leg in addition to international flights, I think it was well worth upgrading!

BTW, we are going in mid- September. Can't wait! Have fun!