Originally Posted by
EXLEFTSEAT
We had a nice vacation planned this year to Fiji and had award tickets ex NRT paid with MP miles. At the last moment NZ made a schedule change that made the arrival of the flight from NRT coincide exactly with the departure time of the flight to NAN. There were no options, no other flights were available and we had to cancel the whole trip.
Now I booked a trip to Tahiti for August 2014. The connection in AKL was for 1 hr and 20 minutes and that seemed doable. Today I receive a schedule change and the flight from NRT arrives at 8:20 a.m. with a 9:15 a.m. departure to PPT.
Already now, nearly a year ahead, there are no available seats on any other flights and I am of course stuck with NZ. I would leave Japan earlier, but UA prohibits any stopovers in AKL on those Island trips.
Will 55 minutes transit be enough, assuming I leave on time from NRT?
Don't mean to whine, but does NZ not count on any pax from NRT catching those flights in AKL?
I feel your pain. I'm in the similar situation. Booked 2 award tickets from UA for my August holiday next year from Singapore to Tonga TBU via AKL with SQ+NZ all the way in business but now the NZ flight from AKL to TBU has schedule change. It will depart earlier than the arrival of SQ flight, makes it impossible to get to TBU, the only option is to fly from SIN to NRT for the NZ flight from NRT to AKL but the NRT-AKL flight is only available in economy!
Since I'm sure a lot of Japanese will go to Tahiti for honeymoon, specially in August, so I'm pretty sure you won't miss your connection to PPT. They will wait for the passengers from the NRT-AKL flight in case of delay. AKL is a very easy airport for transit/transfer, sometimes the plane just taxi at the gate right next to the transit area for security scan. Yes, you need to go through x-ray again for transit but I did it more than 5 times in the past 2 years and i'd never seen any queue, so 55 minutes is really good enough!
Now I'm curious how you could get the award seats for the outbound AKL-PPT segment in August. I didn't see any award for the first 2 weeks of August. I guess you will be flying in mid or late August right?
Regarding stopover in New Zealand, I just made a inbound stopover at Queenstown after visiting PPT (few months ago in the past August). I guess UA still allows you to make a stopover at New Zealand AFTER your final destination.