NZ to begin IAH flights
 

Per the New Zealand Herald, NZ will be starting flights to IAH near the end of the year. Congrats to NZ and IAH! It's about time this happened! :):)

I wonder what Smisek must be thinking now after he had decided to "punish" IAH for allowing WN international flights out of HOU.

I really happy about this. I now live in New Zealand and can fly home to Houston non-stop. I am also glad that it is with Air New Zealand because they have really good service and with Koru membership I am sure there will be lounge access at IAH. We will have a 2 yr old an a 3 month old when this service starts so it beats having to stop in LAX or SFO with little ones. I just hope we can get good fares.

I was gutted when Smisek cancelled the IAH-AUK flight proposal. I was platinum with UA at the time. Now that I have switched Airpoints it works out better for me.

AUK is in Alaska. AKL is what you are after.;)

If you search the NZ forum, you'll be amazed by how many passengers are looking to fly to AUK. :)
Edit: "AUK" is in 45 threads in this forum. :)

Back in 2011 for the RWC my accreditation said valid for AUK, OTA, CAN, and WGN. These are Auckland, Dunedin, Christchurch, and Wellington respectively. These codes are part of the UN Locode system.

As we are talking aviation, the IATA codes are the right ones. :)

In Locode, AUK includes the entire region around Auckland rather than the airport. OTA and CAN are the regions of Otago and Canterbury respectively, not just the cities.

They also use the codes AKL, WLG, CHC and DUD for the airports, distinct from the region names.

So everybody is correct - just don't accidentally book a flight online to AUK :)

Correct - they are codes for the old provinces and usually include more than one airport.

Too bad they are in the 772. Someone correct me if I am mistaken, but the 772 v2/retrofit do not have the 789 PE seating, correct? I looked it up on Seatguru and it appears to be less space and worse seating compared to the 773 PE configuration.

Half correct.

The 789 and refitted 772 share the same product across all three classes. The PE is the same and is seven abreast in the 789 and eight in the 772 (which is an improvement over the old configuration at nine abreast).

This does differ to the Spaceseats on the 77W (six abreast) but it is still a competitive and (IMO at least) pretty decent PE product comparable to other carriers.

The 777 refit has the identical PE seats as the 789.

The Spaceseat is a highly polarising product with a pretty even split between those who hate it and those who love it - there is no in-between. I know a couple of people who have flown lately who hate the Spaceseat, but love the new PE seat.

If they are the same seats, then perhaps Seatguru is wrong then in the description or maybe spacing is different. They are showing 41-19 vs 41-18.5 (77W). I assumed the 1/2" difference indicates that the seat would be different.

When I was shopping for tickets for my most recent trip, I found that the pricing of the 772 was identical for the 773 Space Seat. I avoided the 772 for that reason. Even if they put in the 789 PE seats, I'd still hope they'd charge less than the 773 PE.

Perhaps AUK is a backwards UA 1K?

The new 772/789 PE seat probably takes an similar amount of space, just its in 2-4-2/2-3-2

Seat Guru is pretty much wrong for most NZ aircraft. Best to checkout NZ's own website, which has the ability to see what rows have what pitch etc.

787-900
777-300ER

777-200ER (Refit)

Actually, NZ's website neglects to mention seat width. They talk about pitch and recline, but not width.

Air NZ (like pretty much every airline) don't differentiate between product type between aircraft type.

I'm also surprised why you'd think they would charge less for a 789/77R PE seat, when it's a product that some people in here will deem to be superior to the Spaceseat which I explained above in a very polarizing product and disliked by many (but also loved by many).

It wouldn't surprise me to see the Spaceseat eventually dumped on the 77W and replaced with the new PE seat due to the fact it's disliked by so many people, and the economics of it. The economics of the Spaceseat changed literally the week after the first 77W sent into service and they had to rip an entire row out because the seats were so tight.