Originally Posted by das
Trouble is I usually pay the lowest fares as my travel is leisure, planned in advance. I did a quick check SYD-WLG and see the cheapest fare is $189 and the flexi saver is $259 - that's a 37% premium each way to earn miles.
Absolutely not worth it - with currency conversions that works out to 5 cents extra per mile. Makes NZ a prime candidate for mileage burn, and a weak candidate for mileage runs!
But this is very different from saying that almost all NZ fares are non-mileage earning. That's just untrue - it's more true to say that almost all NZ fares are mileage-earning. You're simply unwilling to pay the extra money to get yourself out of the bracket of non-mileage earning fares.