Over the past year, the NZ Annual/Interim reports have made references to coming changes to Airpoints.

One area in which AP is notably poorer than other *A FFPs is regards to earn/burn ratios.

Not being able to earn partner mileage on low longhaul fares, whilst being able to do so in AP favours AP members. Yet when it comes to redeeming, AP members are disadvantaged compared to other airlines' members, with extremely high burn levels for longhaul on NZ, especially in premium cabins and even higher levels for other carriers.

Shorthaul premium cabins are also expensive in AP relative to other *A carriers, obvious in the South West Pacific region where other carriers typically have a ~35k points requirement for J, one of the great bargains in *A. Admittedly, this is essentially a dumping ground for points on NZ, given there are no other *A carriers operating routes of note in this region.

Clearly NZ is happy to take revenue in from other airlines FFPs, but really tries to discourage its members from spending their APD on other carriers, and in some cases, prevents them from crediting their travel to other programs. NZ's also relatively light premium seating configs in their own fleet arguably reduce the need to give away redemption inventory to fill cabins (except on A320s, it seems!).

Some things I'd like to see in Airpoints are:

• Some sort of QF 'Classic Awards' type award levels for AP members - essentially today's NZ system is like a QF "AnySeat" redemption scheme. I don't consider the discounted Business fares reasonable.
• Status Bonus on earning - this would at least help alleviate the high burn levels in AP.

Would be interested to hear others' thoughts - I'm sure there are many other things beyond points earn/burn.