Originally Posted by samjaynz

"Welcome aboard today's private jet flight. Catering is two minute noodles and budget brand cola" perhaps?

I do agree with that comment that some people will go to crazy lengths to shave a few dollars off the cost of travel ... but ultimately your budget is your budget, and I don't agree with "shaming" people for trying to make things work within their means.

At the same time it does seem crazy to go through several connections and many more hours, or subject yourself to some horrendous in-terminal wait time just to save the cost of a few drinks and sandwiches that you'll probably need to buy.

In fact, penny-pinching on flights like this backfired on me once, when I booked a flight for my wife and I from Melbourne to Sydney. We met up with some friends from Sydney (with whom we were going to stay but who were in Melbourne for work) and they said we could hitch a ride with them to the airport as their work pays the taxi cost. I showed one of them our Jetstar flight details, to which he said "you moron, you've booked a flight from Avalon and not Tullamarine". The $100 I had shrewdly saved on flights was more than eaten up by the very long Uber ride, and some awful overpriced cheese toastie in the barn that is Avalon airport.

On a related note about domestic/international connections, is there any way to get Air NZ to 'combine' a separate domestic and international ticket if the connection wasn't there at the time of booking. E.g. we are flying to Fiji soon for a holiday. We fly from Chch to Auckland on a Friday afternoon, stay overnight, and fly out on a separately booked ticket the next AM (this is because all of the flights Air NZ offered had very tight connections and very early starts). Obviously if the Friday flight got cancelled we could be SoL (hopefully insurance would cover). Is there anyway to get these flights combined as if I had booked a single ticket and then adjusted the Chch - Auckland flight to leave earlier?