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Old Feb 18, 2019, 1:48 pm
  #72  
kiwifrequentflyer
 
Join Date: Nov 2017
Location: New Zealand (when I'm home!)
Programs: Air NZ Elite
Posts: 1,218
Originally Posted by sbiddle
You're totally ignoring why Australians fly NZ - in many cases they can't fly direct.

You can't fly direct to IAH, EZE nor ORD for a start.

For FIFO workers flying to Southern Texas the closest you can get from Australia is DFW which then means a drive down to the coast or another flight to IAH or HOU as well as a connecting flight inside Australia to get to SYD. If you're flying from Perth to Houston (or MEL or BNE which are two other significant cities for FIFO oil workers) then NZ is the most logical connection to get there.

Given the choice of transiting through AKL or LAX to get to a destination from Australia to inside the US I'd opt for AKL any day of the week.
Sure if you need to go to those specific USA destinations regularly you could choose to opt to fly via AKL instead of connecting domestically in the USA. But those are pretty corner cases. And obviously if you fit into that corner case good for you.

For most Australians it makes sense to accrue status with an airline like Qantas that they can fly with domestically and get benefits for, plus fly to a whole range of destinations around the world such as Asia directly. And so if you are flying TT a lot and need to choose an airline to accrue status with, the chances are you will pick Qantas since it makes the most sense.

And in regards to everyone saying there is no benefit to being elite if you fly regionally, you are right. The FF program is all about long haul. Parking vouchers are hardly an actual benefit even if you can use them. If you only fly regionally then having Koru is just as good as having Elite. The Elite benefits only kick in for long haul. Its the biggest problem with the Air NZ FF program, there is no incentive if you fly regionally to get status, but Air NZ probably don't care at all since they have zero competition. If they aren't competing against another airline then they have no incentive to try and keep you loyal, since you are trapped with them anyway. Internationally competition exists and so they have to compete to maintain my loyalty. If you fly domestically only I would not care at all about status and just get Koru.

Last edited by kiwifrequentflyer; Feb 18, 2019 at 1:53 pm
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