I'm flexible as to my travel period. Christmas/New Year's would be ideal, but I realize I have almost no chance of getting business class seats around that time. January or February is the fall back.

From reading about the forthcoming NZ business class product, it looks it will be significantly better than UA's, especially with lie flat seats. Subject to availability, I can fly NZ on the transpacific routes both ways, right? For example, SAT-[DEN]-LAX/SFO-AKL-stopover-SYD on the outbound and SYD-AKL-LAX/SFO-[DEN]-SAT on the return. Correct?

Finally, am I better off calling UA's international folks to try to find seats or Star Alliance considering that I would prefer to fly NZ?