Anyone had experience booking flights PPT to AKL recently and flew Tahiti Nui but on an NZ ticketed flight? Ran into a bit of a conundrum on this one:

- Planning a trip from YVR - 4 nights in Tahiti - on to CHC - then eventually back to YVR, with three young kids next year.
- Not possible to fly NZ from YVR-PPT obviously, but keen to fly NZ on the other legs to take advantage of a little bit of status and a koru membership.
- Seems to be three possible options for the PPT to CHC leg that I can see:

1) PPT - AKL on NZ903, then AKL-CHC on NZ555 or similar. Problem with this option is that it departs at a really obnoxious time (0230 to 0310 depending on time of year), especially with young kids. Not keen on this when trying to have a holiday.
2) PPT-AKL on TN101, then JS237 to CHC. Departs PPT at a more reasonable time (0825) but I prefer not use Jetstar at all if I can help it, and would be no access to the Koru lounge at AKL
3) PPT - AKL on TN101 (codeshare NZ315) then NZ547 or similar to CHC - far and away the best option combining a reasonable flight time on an NZ ticketed flight

The problem is the option #3 seems to randomly come and go on the Airnz website. It's not related to flight scheduling or seat availability and I assume it's some sort of codeshare vagary. For any given day between Feb 2023 and Aug 2023, it sometimes pops up, but then disappears for the same day, only to subsequently pop up and disappear yet again.

Any pearls of wisdom? Dates are flexible but looking at July 5, 2022 currently, both TN101 and NZ903 scheduled that date with plenty of availability. Call the Airnz booking center? Am I (in the post covid era) booking too far out for airnz to have much visibility into their codeshare scheduling? And lastly, why does NZ put their PPT-AKL flights at that time? Even by North American standards it's an exceedingly unpleasant time of day to start a short haul flight – too late to be a proper red eye but too early to have any chance of much sleep at the hotel prior. Realistically you might get 2.5 good hours of sleep that night on the plane - in any class. Not going to happen on a family holiday!