Originally Posted by
Palaimo
Ah, OK. For some reason from the reading I had done I was under the impression that award travel to NZ was limited regardless.
In any case, I still like the idea of choosing a program like UR that allows you to "hold" the points with the option to pay with points in the event award availability is limited.
Point well-taken about parking the UR points in the program until you decide where to use it.
However the essence is, using the UR point in its cash value is about the lowest value you would achieve as it is a strict one penny per point. Inevitably if the UR pts are transferred to an airline program, the value even using a coach award would be doubled or tripled of that 1 penny per point cash value.
Take your own example of buying ticket with $1500 - that costs 130K UR pts with the 25% discount if booked thru UR site as redemption - but, 130K CO miles can get you 2 coach tickets to achieve the same thing, plus a stopover somewhere to boot. While with your cash value you can only buy 1 coach ticket with a little bit $ left over and most likely no stopover anywhere.
I have never seen any day that Qantas does not have coach award seats between US and NZ/Australia for all the periods I search for business class awards.
ditto for CO awards. ditto for AS awards using DL flights.
Coach awards are ABUNDANT because those who hoard miles to go, would much rather fly business class to have a flat bed or at least a lie flat seat for that 14 to 15 hours flight. A long flight under 10 hours is well within many people's tolerance but as the flight goes longer, each additional hour would add discomfort EXPONENTIALLY. The last few hours on such a long flight is very very hard. We have been in NZ 5 times, basically every 2 years. The first 2 times we flew coach. The last 3 times we flew business. Best business seats on the South Pacific to North America / Europe would be the Star A members - NZ, AC & VS. They are all full flat bed seats.