Originally Posted by
sbiddle
If you're talking points earned on Air NZ the beauty of the program (ignoring the downsides) is you can book whatever flight you want on any day.
You can do that with other programmes as well. Other programmes have both reward seats and any seats. Only any flight any day requires significantly more miles than reward seats. NZ virtually release no reward seats to partner programmes and Airpoints members can't book reward seats. In my opinion, the any flight any day is simply a marketing spin to get you to burn more points each and every time in thinking they have 100% reward availability when in fact it's 0%. Most people fall for it.
Originally Posted by
sbiddle
While we can all mock the current APD earn in some ways it hasn't fundamentally changed that much. I remember in the late 90's how you basically got a free trip to AU by looking a return trip to London. Fly to London now and you get somewhere in the low APD 200 - 250 range depending on how much you pay. That can still buy you a return ticket to Aussie, remembering that tax has always been additional with reward tickets.
But if you want to redeem a long haul flight, it will take you more than double, even triple the amount of flying you needed in the 90's. The gap is even wider in premium cabins.
Like you said, a big portion of the tran-Tasman tickets are taxes which you will pay anyway so you really have not earned a lot.