I'll add a OneUp experience...

The better half is joining me in HKG (from AKL) early October and she has recently bid APD850 (yes 850!) to go from Economy to Premium Economy.

At the moment FlightStats is showing U/7 E/7 O/7 A/7. Does that mean they have only sold 8 seats so far? Jeez.

Anyway, with a high bid such as that one...I'd be surprised if she doesn't get an upgrade. Will keep ya'll posted.

And, yes, I did mention to her that it's a 772 with old school 3-3-3 seating...but hey, they were essentially free points gifted from a large pool and she's keen for the experience :)

Don't know Mapnz but I am also keen to find out.

I still have 2 standbys pending that each cost me APD$250.

Best NPE/SYD Business fare I have seen is about $730 each way when on sale.

So my Works fare, at about $350 each way, + a hoped-for APD$250 upgrade would mean that business cost $600. I could live with that, even if it is on a 763.

what could I say? the normal differential between Y and PE is $900 on the booking engine... if you bid $850, I would have just pay $900 in hard cash to secure my increased SP and APD with my booking...

I guess this is what AirNZ wants.. to max their revenue.... no offence, but I do not think that was a wise bid, maybe its just me

Tell me about it!! The joys of being in the midst of travelling and out of contact for extended periods (me), and last minute plans to meet up from across each side of the globe ^

The 'better' half had already bid by the time I could say anything. I just laughed when I heard the amount of APD spent (even if they were gifted by a GE with tons in the APD bank, it was way too much).

The thing that gets me the most tho, is that by the loadings (if I am reading it correctly) there is 75% of the PE cabin still to be sold. I reckon a bid of around $400 might have worked.

Oh well, whaddyagoingtodo:D

P.S
Of course, she still has to secure the PE upgrade and get a good seat in the 36 spots

Oh wow, silly silly silly.

successful
 

APW/AKL 18 Sep 12

NZ 295 op by 772

avail prior was C/4 D/4 Z/4 J/2

actual load was 12/26 (including us)

ticketed T class seat only WST 493/NZ$ 292 plus tax per person

bid NZ$ 200 each (2 x pax)

confirmation received 4 days prior

Nice, was that an aircraft change?

I booked 14/08/12 and it was always the 772. On board I was told it operated alternative Tuesdays to the 763. However, I see next month it's downgraded to the A320 :(

It can still be changed. There is the following text on the One Up web page so you can cancel a request of adjust it up or down if done up to 7 days before the flight.

Probably a bid about half the original should work with it possibly being adjusted up / down depending on how full PE is closer to the departure date.

Regarding the number of available seats in PE, yes there are 36 seats in total in the PE cabin on the 772. However U7 E7 O7 A7 does not simply mean there are 7*4=28 seats unsold in the cabin as any class lower than U simply means the number of seats the revenue team are prepared to offer for sale at discounted levels. The most accurate representation of the total number of available seats for sale in a cabin is always to look for the number of highest class seats available for that cabin, in this case U. However, for PE, NZ will not show the availability of seats past 7. So in this case, there are currently at least 7 seats unsold in PE, and very likely more, given the number of seats they are prepared to sell at O level and the A class availability. Hope this clears things up a bit. BTW, the OneUp bid is ridiculously high :/

Thanks a bunch Trumpkin & KiwiHighFlyer.

Clarified two important queries I had regarding changing OneUp bids, and the number of seats available/ fare class nuances.

I think I have convinced the better half to modify the bid (she was suckered by the AirNZ low/ average/ high rating at first go)...will prob halve to around 400-500APD, and yes, will check with 7 days out, to see if things are getting more packed in PE so as to modify again, if required.

Will advise on whether or not it worked ( :

I feel the Air New Zealand OneUp program is just a big money making scheme for Air NZ which does not benefit Airpoints members.

Flight end of September 2012
AKL- LA, Economy to Premium Economy, bid NZ$860 for 2 seats, rejected.
LA - LHR Premium Economy to Business Premier, bid $460 for 2 seats, rejected.

I then called AirNZ direct and found out that the AKL to LA flight was indeed sold out in Econ and Premium Econ.

I then questioned the LA - LHR leg.
And told that there were a 'number' of seats available in Business on my LA- LHR leg?
I questioned why we had then not been allocated those seats, to which I was told, 'I'm unable to answer that question, please direct your question to [email protected].

Uhm?

It's early days in the OneUp programme for sure.
But my initial thought is it's another 'lose lose' for us and a 'gain gain' for AirNZ.

Bring on the competition.

Can feel your frustration on not getting the upgrade to BP for sure...but 230APD each to go from PE to BP??

I'd say you got outbid....or if there were seats still available...they obviously didn't appreciate your cheekyness! BTW, the old Standby Upgrade for this was 480APD.

P.S if you really must go from AKL-LAX, there is no competition. We're stuffed on this one.

It's worth noting that the One Up "bid strength indicator" appears to show the same rating regardless of the currency it is denominated in.

For example, I can only bid in £ sterling (or APD$ converted into £ sterling), but I could never bid for the equivalent of APD$460 for two people to upgrade LAX-LHR PE-BP because that would be £115 pp which is below the threshold for making a bid.

The scale doesn't recalculate very weak to strong according to currency conversion, just the nominal amounts.

So a bid of £300 to upgrade LAX-LHR in BP is "weak" but if it had been APD$600 for a NZ based member it would be "good".

What's the effect of that? Assuming Air NZ prefers the maximum value (and so will value £300 over APD$300, it means NZ based Airpoints members are at a disadvantage compared to foreign based travellers who, because of their stronger currencies (and frankly higher purchasing power parity to income) are able to outbid them.

So it is plausible that bids in APD from NZers can be outbid by US$, £ and Euro based bids in cash, because the same nominal amount (worth more in foreign currencies) gets the same rating.

I think it's more likely it is just a bug in the software which isn't taking account of the currency when determining the bid strength.

When the bids are processed I strongly expect them to take note of the currency and not just the amount.

That's precisely it's intention.

+ 1
I too think the bid of $230 each was cheeky, however why they accept it is a mystery as it just wastes everyone time/hopes

Yes, it could be seen as a cheeky bid. However it is just like bidding $2 on a $1 reserve auction on Trade Me. You know you're unlikely to win with the $2 bid, but at the same time it is a valid bid and you might just have the winning bid.

By not specifying a reserve Air NZ run the risk of not having enough people bid over their reserve price. However if they specify a reserve price then it is likely to make people more likely to bid closer to this value and it will stop some people submitting very high bids.

yes agree too on your comments but the flight they bid on took off with empty seats in biz class, so Air NZ seem to be ignoring the lower bids??

'LA - LHR Premium Economy to Business Premier, bid $460 for 2 seats, rejected.'

I have to admit this offer from PE to BP was a test of the system.
I am actually really happy with my PE booking.

However, confirmation of the AirNZ greed or move to increase profits at the expense of loyal AP members (understandable as they run a business also!) is apparent here:

http://plusgrade.com/

'Want to see how Plusgrade can get as much revenue as possible out of every flight?'

Say no more.

As a newbie I really appreciate all your previous comments. Thanks.

Sorry that was actually NZ$280 pp not $230.
Still did not make any difference.

Just had a look at all Plusgrade's clients. It seems that other airlines run Plusgrade and their own FFP upgrades in parallel. I can see these other airlines have concerns of not upsetting their high value customers. No idea why NZ went to such an extreme.

Our family of four is currently booked Auckland to LAX in PE departing in approx 3 weeks. Flight is only half full at this stage with full availability in BP.

I am going to make a one up bid for BP. Have absolutely no idea what to bid and was delighted when I stumbled across this forum. We have no status. Husband is koru but that's all. Do you think that a bid of $1250pp would be high enough?

I'm Gold with NZ and my bid of $900 from PE to BP got declined 3 days out from departure on a lightly loaded PVG-AKL flight a couple of weeks ago. The flight was showing C4 D4 Z4 J2. I was shocked and called the premium team, they were apologetic and spoke to the revenue team while I was on hold, but came back with the news that they didn't want to confirm any OneUp bids for U to C upgrades on that flight because they wanted to keep the C seats for revenue purposes :rolleyes:

When asked what they'd do with the seats if they didn't sell (and mostly likely none of them did), they said they would be used as recognition upgrades (10 on the waitlist). I have had no success with OneUp bids on the long haul routes yet, even with *G status about to go to *GE. Pretty annoyed as all my bids have been very high and I actually needed the upgrades over the last few trips due to an injured neck. From numerous phone calls to the premium team, they could confirm though recognition upgrades are looked at and considered before OneUp's are assessed 7 days out, and they do still have priority "to an extent" over the OneUp's fortunately/unfortunately ;).

The honest answer is nobody knows, but my only observation is that the old (and still the valid) fixed standby upgrade rate from PE to BP on this route is APD$480.

Assuming you are bidding $1250 for all four of you, that comes to $313.50 a head. If Air NZ was seeking to use OneUp to increase revenues, it wouldn't want to allow such a relatively cheap upgrade. On top of that, such a bid would definitely rank lower than recognition upgrades presented by GE, G and S members.

My bet is that your chances are very low as NZ will either upgrade all four at once, or none of you. A group of four is going to be hard to accommodate if, after allocating recognition upgrades and higher bids, there are less than four seats available.

Since it is all very new and news about successful and unsuccessful bids is patchy, I wouldn't guess as to what would work, but if I was bidding I would start at the GE standby bid price and work upwards.

Kiwihighflyer's post indicates that if Air NZ thinks it might sell the seats, your chances are slim, and are behind recognition upgrades that may be allocated at check in. Good luck nevertheless!

I'd say for 1250APD per person, you'd be doing pretty well.

As LibertyUK has pointed out, the old standby fare for this upgrade was 480APD, so AIRNZ would be pretty happy if you bid 1250 I suspect.

Of course, with 4 pax looking for an upgrade, it might be tougher, especially if Kiwihighflyer's thinking is correct in that those seeking recognition upgrades (those flyers with status) are placed first in the queue.

Very interesting to see how you get on...this may be a case when a high bid (essentially 6000APD!) gets put before recognition upgrades (as many others on this forum have speculated occurs anyway).

Best of luck!

P.S cross posting is where you've posted the same question on two threads ( :

I have had it confirmed that recognition upgrades do clear before oneup.
So after seats are sold, and recognition upgrades are cleared, there may be seats availiable for oneup.
The AKL-LAX route is pretty busy so I would not hold my breath for oneup upgrades.
But I do wish you good luck.

+1 WLGNZ
although you say flight is half-full, chances are, they will be full or close to full closer to the date of departure. Although it might not be a fair comment, we cannot simply add the seats available from ZJCD classes to know exactly how many seats they have really sold. seat maps are not trust worthy either since there might be real bookings without a seat selection

I just do not really believe that with no competition AirNZ would only be 1/2 full on those routes, but all the best to your bid!

Easiest way and more true to see how many seats available is to do a dummy booking, anything up to 9 seats can be done, to see if it allows the seats/tickets, however you will not know how many recognition awards are in the system for upgrades first.

Still nice to know NZ appear to be putting the recognitions through first^
Thanks Air NZ :)

At the moment there is full availability in BP and PE is half full. With the same seating capability in both cabins, even if all pax in PE used recognition upgrades or oneup bids I would hope with bids of over 1K each we would be in with a chance. Flight is on the last weekend of school holidays and I understand AirNZ has put on additional flight that day as lots of families returning to NZ from LAX. We are however on outbound flight. Anyway fingers crossed and will post an update once I hear.

In the end I made a bid of 1400 each, so 5600 in total. If that's not enough for an upgrade where 3 weeks out BP still has full capacity then I won't ever bother with OneUp again.

I think that 3 weeks out a lot can happen, its a busy route and popular, also seats will be sold as a lot of business passengers can book late, hence lots of HV NZ customers that put in for recognition and oneups with weighting added to their bids, why not ring Air NZ and ask how much for buying business seats now? if there are so many seats available now as you say then the cheaper biz fares should still be available, at least then you know for sure ;)

Glad your maths is better than mine! :D

Good luck, please let us know how you got on.

Perth - Auckland Sunday 30th Sept
Bid $320 - Successful!
PE to BP

That flight now shows as C4 D0 Z0 J0 which indicates it's fairly full in front (vindicating the upgauge to a 777).

I presume this now includes the successful upgrades.

Yeah nice work to check - It would be good if someone made an post on how to use expert flyer to help choose the right amount to bid for the situation, I asked my travel agent once or twice.

I will post back after the flight with what the loading was.

indeed a lot can happen in 3 week's time
from the info I have got Dilmah, you would be traveling on 12/13 Oct? NZ does have 3 services from AKL - LAX on those two days NZ2/4/6

maybe I am looking up the wrong thing, but the only flight that you can book 9 Business seat on 13 Oct is on NZ2, the others do not have more 9 seats. and looking at availability on EF

NZ4 C4 D3 Z1 J0 U7 E7 O7 A7 Y7 B7 M7 H7 Q7 V7 W7 T7 L7 S7 G7 X2 K6 P0
NZ6 C4 D1 Z1 J0 U7 E7 O7 A7 Y7 B7 M7 H7 Q7 V7 W7 T7 L7 S7 G7 X4 K7 P0
NZ2 C4 D4 Z4 J1 U7 E7 O7 A7 Y7 B7 M7 H7 Q7 V7 W7 T7 L7 S7 G7 X2 K7 P0

when you have J down to 0, or 1, it can mean that they are pretty busy or they do it deliberately to up-revenue

so unless you are on NZ2 and assuming that you are traveling on that date, there is not much chance to get all 4 seats. You keep on saying that the cabins are 1/2 full, they certainly don't look like it for me (hope I am looking at the wrong dates)

also, while your bid is quite high, AirNZ would still not give that to you if they can sell these at approx. $1k extra each on top of what you are bidding

Given the PE seat at $1869 one way on A fare (lowest of PE classes)
the fare difference that I get on NZ2 between PE and J for the first J seat is (selling at $3819) fare diff of $1950 ($700 more than what you are bidding) or
Z (selling at $4194), fare diff of $2325 ($1075 more than what you are bidding) or
D (selling at $4569), fare diff of $2700 ($1450 more than what you are bidding)
C (selling at $5569), fare diff of $3700 ($2450 more than what you are bidding)

I really hope that my calculation could be wrong above, but without status and with Recognition Upgrade going first, while what you are bidding is quite a lot per pax, the chances are not high I am afraid...

The concept for OneUp is to max. revenue or else people would have booked in the higher fares to start off with, so maybe it is good just to go easy and relax and maybe put in a little bit more next time!

but all said, Good luck! =)

You can't add C, D, Z & J together as the availability above shows how many of each booking class the airline is offering and often overlaps. Therefore it is possible if someone books 1 x J on NZ2 (or 1 of anything higher) the availability could change to ...

NZ2 C3 D3 Z3 J0 ...

indicating they had only 4 business seats left, of which 1 was able to be booked as J class.

BTW, NZ only ever shows a maximum of 4 seats in business class. However, there could be any number higher than this actually available on a particular flight.

Thanks deconz I think you are preaching to the converted here =p
I think you are quoting what I ve said few posts back =) you are quoting me so I just want to have this cleared =p

It is just me lying out how many seats airnz are willing to sell at each fare with regards to the oneup process and in general, I do not think that AKL to LAX would only be half full in J

It was also true what Janec said about the booking engine

Cheers


Edit: too early in the morning, I guess I see where you are coming from there... when I say "all 4 seats" it is what Dilmah is bidding on and not the taking literally C4, D4, Z4 etc. =)

Edit: too early in the morning, I guess I see where you are coming from there... when I say "all 4 seats" it is what Dilmah is bidding on and not the taking literally C4, D4, Z4 etc. :)