Originally Posted by
LyingFlat
I can see sense in this. If it is indeed still in trial phase, it makes it much easier to have certain restrictions in place. No point rolling it out across the network only to find the system doesn't work as planned.
Also, upgrades at the airport (regardless of where in the world the passenger leaves) are handled by AKL service control. I would imagine that they would get pretty swamped with loyalty upgrades, staff upgrades, catering, load controls, and now a whole load of global airport one-up trials. Watch this space is what I would say.
Partially agree, except that by only offering it on AirNZ purchased tickets, not travel agency issued tickets, they are ignoring a huge segment of the corporate travel market... which is often going to be a market segment that is burning Airbucks (etc) to upgrade.
As for AKL service control - they have had to clear all the Airbucks and RU upgrades worldwide in the past, I don't believe that OneUp would have increased the amount of upgrades overall - except that it's probably made it harder to manage since they're not going to be automatically waitlisted in CARINA -- which did give remote ports a fair amount of latitude in clearing waitlists without approval from AKL, in my experience.
Again, the OneUp decision making business life harder for the airline.