Hey everyone. Not sure if this is the correct category to post in but needed some help with regard to Air New Zealand. Two days ago made a booking for a one-way trip to London via JFK with British Airways doing the JFK-LHR leg, the connection time is 2.25 hours which I'm acutely aware is very short, we previously had a 2 hour connection time in Chicago when travelling back from NZ and made our United flight with under 5 minutes to spare.

I'd like to prefferably get a later evening flight out of JFK giving us 4-6 hours transfer time, but on Air New Zealand I'm unable to change to any other flight out of JFK apart from one Virgin Atlantic flight which is even lesser connection time. I've contacted Air NZ via livechat and they've said as the flights are connected they can't change one of the flights (???) and when adding the BA flight to my British Airways account it just says the flight can only be changed when there's less than 24 hours to fly.

I somehow refuse to believe its not possible for us to change one leg on our journey to a later scheduled flight across all carriers (United, AA, BA, Aer Lingus, Virgin etc) has anyone ever had any luck of changing these kind of flights? Am I better to call Air NZ? Do I speak to ground staff when I arrive in Nelson to see my parents? Do I even try contacting BA?