Originally Posted by
findark
NZ has been decent about releasing I space, but only during low season (the southern winter). They do not release any I space at all until 90 days from departure.
With UA, you might have a sliver of a hope if you depart in the first week or two of December. If you're trying to head down south in the neighborhood of Christmas, just give up now and book Standard Awards or pay. There is some chance of transiting Asia, but that's long and all too often involves CA and/or an Asia-ANZ segment in Economy.
Echo these comments. I have a trip to New Zealand/Australia coming up at the beginning of March and finding direct award space to Auckland at the end of Summer/beginning of fall was super tough. Prior to the SFO-AKL route switching to the 773 I was only able to find business award space from LAX-SYD-AKL(now to be fare I was a bit date contained, but looking daily at February/March dates I don't remember seeing any dates with saver business space open up before I booked the LAX-SYD-AKL flight). Once the SFO-AKL route switched to a 773 business saver space opened up for a few days, but after that, it dried up again. Also, it seemed even harder to find direct saver business space back to the states from New Zealand/Australia than space getting there. In the end, I opted to purchases the returned flights during a OW P fare sale from AKL rather than wait to see if space opened up, as at ~4 months out I got tired of looking to see if space opened up every day. The long story short is direct saver business space to/from AKL is not easy to find during the southern summer. That said, there tends to be decent saver business space if you're willing to transition through Asia (via Asiana through South Korea during the southern summer or Korean Air year around, or SQ, etc...) but that makes for a not so fun 24 hour of flying.