oranjemakker

How would they even start to implement that? Ridiculous and as you suggest not thought through at all. Do the boarding passes for paid seats have some kind of special marking?

I would suggest that any passenger who has paid for seats and did not get offered "priority boarding" write to Air New Zealand and ask for their money back. This is also a clear case for an Advertising Standard Authority as false advertising. regardless of what the detailed T&Cs may say, the main page of the website is very clear and if they are not delivering this is a case for a complaint

youai779

Its always been a question I have had regarding priority boarding when travelling in NZ. Not that the flights are that big or chaotic as in the US but over there when I have been travelling they have always invited *G, First Class and their own elite customers to board first before they board anyone else. NZ do invite them to board at the start of boarding but like these paid priority boarding tickets how can the ever distinguish and the opoortunity window is so small? Maybe two seperate lines but this would be impractical at the smaller airports.

oranjemakker

Agreed, its a non event in domestic flight in NZ. My point is not that I care about priority boarding, I prefer to board towards the end of the boarding anyway, but why have they promised it in this case? It just sounds like someone thought it would be a good idea and did not work through the implications or discuss it with colleagues first. just poorly thought through. i can understand why they make the announcement for Star golds as its probably part of the Alliance agreement but i dont get it for this seat select.

For regular travelers we would read that line about priority boarding and discount it immediately, but for an occasional traveler it seems reasonable that they should expect Air NZ to deliver on its promise.

Trumpkin

This morning it was very obvious that there are still bugs in the seating process. There was a guy (with GE tag on his bag) sat in the middle seat of a row (2D) when the PM and his security guy get on and head towards the same row. When the PM flies he gets a row to himself and the security guy, so clearly the middle seat should have been blocked out.

The security guy had a word with the FA to see if the person could be moved, but the flight was full, so there was a small shuffling of seats and the passenger ended up in the aisle seat.

I almost ended up in that seat but a window seat was available further back so I took that instead.

youai779

I guess it all comes down to some beautiful marketting. I think it will lead to some frustrations with international guests on domestic flights primarialy when they are used to paying for priority boarding overseas and receiving it.

ajnz

It would be more interesting to know if there is any changes to the international boarding process, particularly for widebody aircraft, to accommodate the preferred seats.

AlastairR

Hi All,
I have just been going through the posts over the last days (decided to have weekend off from Flyer Talk). In summary, three themes have emerged over the last 3 days:
• General seating teething issues – I acknowledge that there have been a number of issues with seating (and to some extent we have always had a number of seating issues even prior to this change!) which we have been endeavouring to work through as quickly as possible. A number of these were fixed late last week and we have more fixes due to deploy this week and early next year. One of the advantages of the seating changes is that we now have a dedicated person responsible for seating at Air NZ so we can escalate and prioritise all the seating issues we have – so please keep on forwarding these through or message me any personal issues as we are tracking these.
• Whether Air NZ should sell preferred seats on turboprops –this is something that we will monitor and observe – we decided initially that we should be consistent across the entire fleet that we operate in terms of offering preferred seats on all aircraft types, however if the customer feedback is poor/uptake is low this is something that we can look into – ie should we not sell any seats on beach at all
• Priority Boarding and whether this benefit is actually been delivered – thanks for your feedback and comments on this issue – I will take it up with our airport managers and get their feedback and thoughts.

Hope you all had a good weekend

Regards Alastair

Blackcloud

The three times I travelled with the PM.
He takes window, staffer either COS or Advisor aisle, middle is free.
Visible security aisle seat across from staffer.
I also seem to be in the window on the same aisle and have the middle free, but it has been 9 months since the last flight with him and I had booked and seat selected about 2 weeks before the flight.

stephen2d

Heh, I remember once being on a flight, row behind from H1 and H2. Never saw visible security (which doesn't mean they weren't on board, though), then again - with H2 you wouldn't need one. Anyway, she was quite laissez-faire - i could see all notes and paper clippings she was reading and I wasn't even trying to peep!

Try peeping at the POTUS and see how far you get. Love NZ!!

Wan1dap

Alastair, there seems to be general agreement that it's good that you are fronting on FT. I'm sure you're an up-and coming manager in Air NZ, but I have to wonder what happened to the people who actually knew about a) revenue management and b) the implementation of policies, ie thinking through the implications for customers and staff, and communicating and training appropriately. Rightly or wrongly I get the impression that policy is being changed at a whim, and that your own staff are bewildered, let alone your customers. I might be an old-fashioned guy but at least I understand the basics of project management, and management of change. Surely somebody in Air NZ still has those skills and could be brought in to help you out? Experimentation is all well and good, but at the expense of customer goodwill? Have you considered the internal cost of all the rework you are causing? And I'm guessing there's a level of staff frustration at the constant chopping and changing; that has a cost too.

My travel patterns have changed over the last couple of years so that I now fly almost exclusively on SQ. They may be one of the least exciting and entrepreneurial companies out there, but it's clear that their focus on consistent and high-level execution is single-minded. Sorry to be so boring but I think you could learn a lot from them (or one of the more senior people in NZ - I'm sure they're still around somewhere).

Trumpkin

I suspect a lot can be learnt from researching potential changes here on the Flyertalk forums. Imagine the new idea is to charge people $1 to use the toilets on board. Using the search function should rapidly determine that this has been suggested for Ryan Air and the various threads that discssed it. This could then be used to gauge likely reaction, issues, etc.

edmm

Hi Alastair
As you want consistency over the whole fleet, why is it that there are almost no changes on the domestic jet services, and almost a 50% reduction in available most requested seats on the ATR's, and 100% on the Beech? Wouldn't consistency dictate that you make 50% of the space-plus seats on the domestic jets into "preferred seats"?
Priority boarding on provincial services is a stupid idea that will never work, but if you sell it to people then they have a right to expect it.

craver

This is right on the money. My guess is that NZ is confusing innovation and innovative thinking with slap-happy experimentation/implementation. That is not world-class behaviour in anyone's book.

robbau

Not sure if it's because I am Silver, but 1A - D on a Q300 are not available for selection (even for purchase) for me until 48 hours ahead.

Any G/GE have a different experience?

WLGNZ

On Q300 these are always locked off until a day or so before departure. For everyone including Elites.