I was making an award redemption for Christchurch-Queenstown-Christchurch and was told that the SQ/NZ codeshares were not bookable. I told the agent that in this case, can I book NZ flight numbers instead of SQ numbers and was also told NO. Said that only specified flights were OK.

For the CHC-ZQN, I could only book the 0900 NZ503 flight. Which means I'll have to stay a day in CHC after coming in on SQ297 which arrives at 11+am.

Similarly for ZQN-CHC, couldn't book the codeshare but only NZ636.

I found this very strange and was wondering if any of you had this experience with SQ/NZ or any other codeshares for that matter.

One thing I note is that all the codeshares were AirNZLink operated ATR72s. Is that why? Those bookable were NZ B733s.