baddarcy

NZ282 AKL to SIN
Y to PE - 14/11/17
$415 plus Gold uplift
Declined 12 hours out

Additional Details : Plane was a V1 Dreamliner and PE was full. My brother in PE had his silver Recognition Upgrade declined on the same flight.

farrsight

NZ1 LAX to AKL
Y to SkyCouch
3rd December 777-300ER v2 (no spaceseats)
Bid $440 NZD/Airpoints plus Silver uplift
Declined 8 hours out

But here's the kicker, the flight was only half-full. Almost everyone in economy had seats open next to them. There appeared to be multiple skycouch rows open. So about 2 nanoseconds after the seatbelt sign turned off after takeoff I hopped into a skycouch row and had it to myself for the whole flight. First time I've used the skycouch and I think I would prefer to have a skycouch more than the the zodiac PE seats. If PE still had spaceseats it would be a toss-up. I felt like PE service level has dropped along with the removal of the spaceseats. I agree with other posters here that PE with spaceseats really did feel a lot more like business-lite.

stewart24

I made a oneup bid for 12/10 NZ6. I'm Silver but I didn't see how to choose "pay with points". The minimum was $380 and my account has airpoints dollars 1,046.20 so I should have enough to pay with points? What did I miss?

kiwibigdave

Got this email at T-11

"We are reviewing flight upgrade requests and noticed you have made a low offer for your flight NZ 5, Los Angeles (LAX) to Auckland (AKL). There's still time to increase your chance of travelling in one of our premium cabins. You can amend your offer up to three days (72 hours) prior to departure. Would you like to review your offer now?"

Presumably that's just a generic pitch?

NZbutterfly

I think you got a good deal actually. Got the sky couch row and kept your $$ despite not having say the mattress. I think long haul I'd also prefer sky couch to the 'new PE'. Assuming I had this all to myself.
If I'm eyeballing a move to another seat I generally aim for a move straight after doors closing, prior to pushback. Pretty risky leaving it until the seat belt sign goes off! Or at least quickly make your intentions know to a FA. I'd kick myself if I missed the opportunity in long haul Y.

sbiddle

Remember not every Skycouch capable seat is sold as the Skycouch product - only around 30% of them are sold. I'd pick you ended up with one of these rows.

Aussienarelle

So they have not taken my money, yet. They told me they would let me know 7 - 9 hours before the flight. Last time (July) they told me my bid was low but for this trip no comment on the amount except to state the amount I did bid. I guess I will find out on Thursday whether the bid was successful. I am in PE LAX-AKL-SYD and I only bid for the upgrade for the LAX-AKL leg. I can sit very comfortably in PE for the AKL-SYD leg. :-)

Aussienarelle

​​​​​​
LAX-AKL PE to BP on 12/14/17. Bid of US $800 unsuccessful at T-8.

So hoping the new PE seats are as comfortable as the older version I had in July.

farrsight

Yeah, I was going to move at door close, but they REPEATEDLY said everyone needed stay in their assigned seat for aircraft weight balance before take-off and then we could move seats. So I tried to politely chat the FA that I bid, it didn't go through and I really wanted to grab that empty row and I would certainly wait until after take off. He said, 'Well, we'll just have to see about that" - actually had a bit of attitude especially considering how polite and deferential I was trying to be...which is what I often get from male FAs on Air NZ...not sure why that always seems to happen to me with AirNZ Male FAs.

sbiddle

Spare rows can be allocated to HVC's by the FSM after take-off and I have seen this done. Speaking to them like this is probably not the best way of ensuring success.

At the end of the day as I mentioned above it's entirely likely that you simply got a spare row rather than an actual Skycouch row, so it doesn't really matter if you bid for a Skycouch row or not if they're all full. The crew will move you back to your original seat even if you've moved to a spare row if they want to allocate that row to a HVC.

codyc1515

I have also observed crew allocating the row(s) to HVCs. Seems to be a regular thing.

codyc1515

Interesting. Just submitted a OneUp from Y to PE on a 777-300 flight to LAX and I was offered to make an additional offer to upgrade to Skycouch if my PE upgrade request was declined. Anyone else seen this before?

nzkarit

No, but that is a nice way of hedging your bets.

Or on the flip side a way to ensure AirNZ extracts every possible cent out of the people who are open to doing One Ups. The share holders will be proud.

codyc1515

Interesting, as I don't remember being offered it before either. To be fair, while the Skycouch is nice, I'm still not convinced that it's even worth $400 each way (which is around the minimum). The $1200 normal price is an absolute non-starter.


Source: Screenshot from Air New Zealand OneUp upgrade confirmation email with optional Skycouch upgrade applied, 17 Dec 2017.

nzkarit

Ahh the UI/UX, it hurts. The two middle rows look as if they are linked not row 1+2 and 3+4