kamchatsky

I guess that's why it would be great for Bruce to confirm, given that whilst FTers in AirPoints program is small around the world, there is a HUGE number of Star Alliance members (especially the FTers here) who will be affected by this change.

Buzz53

I flew CHC-MEL Saturday morning, in business to use up an expiring comp upgrade. 4 pax in total. Had an interesting discussion with the FA about all these changes. She knew I was GE and I told her I was QF G (not that QF have much to offer me for MEL-CHC).
I had the impression that there was some concern amongst flight staff in general about how NZ's valued customers, GE and G, will take the loss of Space+ for these TT flights. I told her it would be a disaster and FT forum members were not particularly happy with this change. Many G and GE voicing their concerns here.
She felt that there might be a separation of front and back of the plane, depending on fare type. But because she had not had her 'update' on the changes this was speculation.
I very much appreciate you coming on board Bruce, but your comment '5 inches less than business' not particularly helpful. Why not say 'x inches', and confirm the number of rows. As GE, I presume this is where I will be seated. But will I get food and drink, or will this depend on fare type?

We had a great chat about FF programs and the pluses and minuses of various carriers. Lots of competition for the lesure market out of CHC, limited business traveller I guess. Got to hand it to AirNZ, in my experience their FAs do a great job and it's a good airline. Which is why I fly with them.
But if the changes are too much, and I feel I don't get value, then I'm happy to get Plat status on QF for all those long-hauls in business to the USA.

My last suggestion to her was for NZ to have lifetime status, to match the QF program, for their frequent flyers!

Xiaotung

I was under the impression that the finer details have not been decided yet. I certainly assume NZ would give redemption from other *A programs the Works option because *A is not a LCC alliance. Also it will be interesting to know which fares are eligible for earning in other *A programs, presumbaly from the Works and above.

kamchatsky

Whilst I certainly want to be optimistic as you are. Remember that *A Award redemption would be pretty low in NZ's foodchain. I do not know how much *A members give funny money to NZ for these seats in awards, but given now that these A320 will be "Economy Only with lots of options", I certainly think NZ can "get away" from it.

It is like UA have *Net blocking, or SQ not releasing J/F seats for A380/77W/A34x planes, as well as US/Europe airlines having much lower quality of seats/services for short haul services, plus all the additional bag/food fee for all these USA short hauls, what is there to stop NZ from make it all Economy only? I don't think *A can do anything about it given all the precedents above.

Afterall sometimes I think NZ Y is better than F for US domestic or some European J short hauls. We living in Asia Pacific are lucky that we are still serviced by good range of airlines, NZ included.

Also remember, Business class is still available for trunk routes to AKL serviced by 767/777/747s. So NZ can still claim that J is still available in main routes.

DCF

Your arguments reflect how Air NZ has misread the Gold Coast market.

Like you, they think of it purely as an outbound leisure market for New Zealanders, rather than as a larger city than Christchurch or Wellington with a per capita GDP 50% higher than any New Zealand city.

So they have hardly bothered to make any of our OOL-AKL services connect to long-haul flights beyond AKL, which is why I still often have to drive up to BNE (a 2.5 hour exercise at rush-hour).

I could go on and on (and on!). Maybe part of the reason Gold Coasters haven't taken up Air NZ Business Class is

a) because onward connections at AKL are awful, and
b) it costs as much as Business Class ex-BNE, but Air NZ has been too mean to even pay for access to the Lounge at OOL.

Air NZ has from day one left OOL's timetable as the same as it was as Freedom Air and has left OOL Business passengers with an inferior product.

And then they wonder why they can't sell the Business seats, when they have only aimed their product at leisure Kiwi travellers and offered nothing for
Gold Coast residents wanting to go to North America.

Maybe they should hold some of their much-vaunted focus groups in Queensland, given that they have until now been a popular alternative to Qantas long-haul, but are throwing away that market with gay abandon.

And by the way, sure it "wouldn't hurt" to sit in Economy for four hours. But why the hell should I, when my corporate travel policy allows me to fly Business Class? There is a limit to my nationalism. In fact, I feel I'm doing Air NZ a favour when I fly Business Class ex-OOL, given that they don't even bother to provide me with lounge access.

(There are deeper problems at OOL. The NZ-uniformed check-in agent never recognises me as a regular in Business Class and insists each time I fly on having an argument about baggage allowances, to the point that I now have the rules printed out to show her each time. It's a really unpleasant experience and last time I flew I warned the colleague I was flying with what was about to happen and who it was about to happen with. Sure enough, it did happen, and my colleague was incredulous that I keep giving my business to Air NZ ex-OOL when they treat their most regular Business passengers like crap.

One example from the top of my head? In a reversal of our normal roles, my wife and kids were stopping off in Hawaii for 2 weeks on their way back from Europe, and I was meeting them in HNL and bringing their warm weather clothes so I had two cases. The NZ agent checked me in (so saw I was flying on to HNL the next morning on the same PNR) but argued with me for having two cases. "You're only allowed one 30 kg case" she told me. "No", I replied, "I'm on a Business Class return ticket to North America which entitles me to 2 x 32 kg bags, plus a third one for being Gold Elite". This continued for around 5 minutes of unpleasant dispute until she relented.

This crappy NZ experience at OOL seem to be just accepted by the airline and I have never been asked about the OOL experience even though I fly in and out in Business Class several times each year - and next do so in 12 days' time.

The check-in area changes constantly, there is no proper signage separating premium and general check-in, and the sole NZ staff member's attitude to non-frequent flyers is even worse than it is to me. And the rest of the staff have no affiliation to Air NZ and are even worse. Each time I tell them that I'm connecting to LAX or SFO they don't know how to transfer luggage - I'm not kidding - and the concept of elite status is really alien to them.

I still do fly to/from OOL because it is so quick to get in and out, but I'm sure that most passengers experience it once and think "I'm never giving these clowns my money again").

DCF

Well KiwiFlyer, when I saw you in the Air NZ lounge at AKL in November I was in transit from HNL to BNE!

But anyway, what you describe is another self-inflicted wound by Air New Zealand. Services from Australia and New Zealand to HNL were rapidly dismantled in the late eighties when 744 aircraft developed long-enough range to cross the Pacific non-stop.

But a substantial market for HNL remains, and in Australia there are no longer flights from MEL and BNE to HNL and everyone is funneled via SYD, which is both a major diversion and a nasty experience (terminal change required, bags have to be reclaimed and put back through security, etc).

I don't claim that there is a market for non-stop services from BNE or MEL to HNL. But Air NZ should have a stranglehold on the one-stop market to HNL but it doesn't because its scheduling sucks - Australians have to overnight in AKL, and after that the flight arrives so late in HNL that they can't even connect to Maui or any other island!

Air New Zealand would find that it could probably operate 4 or even 5 flights per week to HNL instead of 2 if it consistently scheduled its AKL-HNL flights in the same evening bank of flights as LAX/SFO/LHR/YVR, which would mean better connectivity to/from BNE/MEL/ADE/CNS/OOL. It would also become a viable transfer destination for the rest of North America. At present, services to HNL arrive at 2000, which is too late to transfer anywhere, even within Hawaii.

But again, in the heads of the route planners BNE, OOL and HNL are all "leisure destinations for Kiwis" and the idea that some of us at BNE/ADE/OOL/MEL might want to travel to HNL is clearly too difficult a concept. Obviously people living in Queensland don't take holidays, and even when they do they don't like sunshine.

It's really frustrating being an Air NZ long-haul passenger in Queensland. Everything is constructed around low-yield inbound leisure traffic, and our experience as high value outbound passengers is a story of insulting service (OOL) and bad scheduling. Yet the product is actually compelling compared with Qantas (who just want to funnel us through Sydney) and the opposition and with a few tweaks to it Air NZ could still position itself as Queensland's long-haul airline of choice.

But not with the new Tasman product.

brenrox

but, Gold Coast residents are probably low on NZ's priority. First and formost it is a New Zealand airline, so they will be trying to best please this population. Next inline of priority I'm guessing would be major hubs in Aus.

DCF

I don't dispute that.

But between them Queensland and Victoria have more than double New Zealand's population, are 40% richer and are horribly underserved by Qantas, who prefer to funnel everyone through SYD.

Until very recently Air New Zealand balanced the needs of Kiwis visiting Australia with those of Australians travelleing longer-haul, and Tasman services represented that balance. It's why the "Express" model failed.

Now the airline is recycling the Express model in an even more extreme form, and seems not to understand the economics of what it is trying to do. We know from multiple examples - Air NZ Express, Song, Ted and others - that when you increase seating density, remove premium class seating and reduce fares you destroy your yields and make it impossible to remain profitable unless you sell every seat on every plane!

The new model would make sense if the Tasman was exclusively a low-yield point-to-point leisure market. But it isn't: on EVERY flight between Auckland and Australia the low leisure yields are balanced by the higher revenue from passengers flying long-haul. That is what Jetstar and Pacific Blue don't have - but would love to have. Yet Air NZ seem to be diluting the product to their level.

Tasman services and long-haul aren't really different compartments of the airline. The airline - rightly in my opinion - is moving its long-haul product to a higher-yielding market niche. In my opinion it needs a coherent product - rather like Singapore Airlines - if it wants to command those long-haul yields. And if that means exiting or reducing services on underperforming Tasman routes - including my own - that is OK. But it shouldn't dilute its product to pander to those underperforming markets.

At the end of the day the new expanded Premium Economy and Business Premier long-haul products are going to require Australian feed. And that is going to disappear if the proposed new product ever enters service under the Air NZ brand between Australia and Auckland - even if a single daily widebody service remains - because the value of the brand will take a hiding from public perceptions of low service standards.

Xiaotung

If Gold Coast is that rich, populous, and underserved, I wonder why Emirates hasn't started OOL yet.

MrSydney

My guess is:
SYD
MEL
BNE
PER
CNS
OOL
ADL

zqsn5678

have you ever try to file a formal compliant to air nz? im sure something can be done.

i know SYD QF check-in agents (check-in for air nz) can be pretty sh*t, but not to the point i have to argument with them.

MrSydney

I have never had an issue with QF agents at SYD,ever. If anything they have always been very pleasant and professional.

Jagboi

I got a flight booked from YVR-AKL-ADL and then from SYD-AKL-YVR in October in business/business premier, I booked and paid for it in January. Will the AKL-ADL leg now be in a Y class plane? Would there be a fare adjustment if its just a Y class plane now?

That would be quite a difference to go from BP in a 777 to steerage in a 320, especially since I paid for J class all the way. At least it looks like SYD-AKL will still be a J class. The only reason I booked in J is I'm tall and I need the legroom.

Altaflyer

Since there is no J I should hope they would rebook you on an airline that has J class for the Trans Tasman flight.

DCF

We have five times weekly flights via KUL and double daily flights to Japan. These have taken around 30 and 50% respectively of the passengers who previously flew to BNE to/from those markets. Similarly, when Air NZ opened AKL-OOL as a full-service route it shortly afterwards had to downguage NZ135/136 AKL-BNE from a 744 to a 763, so you can draw your own conclusions about how many BNE passengers actually want to go to/from BNE as opposed to OOL.

The thing about the Gold Coast is that it is the continent's fastest growing city (from a small town 30 years ago) and it is geographically close to Brisbane, although it takes 100 minutes to get there by train, which means it's quicker to go from WLG or CHC to AKL than it is for us to get to BNE for a flight.

Just under half of the Gold Coast's population is foreign born or has a foreign passport (half of them are Kiwis) so in Air New Zealand terms it is their fourth largest market of New Zealanders after AKL, WLG and CHC and ahead of Dunedin, Tauranga and Hamilton.

But OOL has been exclusively operated as a station for inbound Kiwi leisure travellers, and most Gold Coast Kiwis don't ever see any advertising material for Air NZ just as 95% of the general population has no idea that they could use Air NZ for one-stop flights to SFO and LAX.

My point is that Air NZ has actually been rather lazy in pigeon-holing OOL as an inbound leisure destination and neglecting to grow its outbound market eastwards in the way that it has already grown westwards (1800 seats per week to KUL) and northwards (4000 seats per week to NRT and KIX). But Air NZ is good at that sort of lazy generalisation: they pulled out of LAX-PPT when they were too obtuse to see the premium class market opportunities for passengers going to NZ$2000/night overwater bungalows, and insisted on sending an excessively Economy configured 763 "because it's a leisure destination". Within a year Air France had taken up the slack and didn't just double their numbers of Business Class seats, but even added First Class . There has still been no acknowledgement from Air NZ that they got LAX-PPT badly wrong, and Air France just counts the $$$ from Air New Zealand's mistake.