Ellice

Trying to go Asia-EUR and wondering is there any availability in J outside of TG from BKK? Does anyone know what level of availability NZ has with CX award flights to EUR. ie if you can see them on, say, BA can those awards be booked by airpoints members, or not neccessarily?

Ellice

Does anyone know if Expert Flyer shows award availability on it's partners that they deny is available when you ring up to book? Thanks for any insights/experiences here!!

sbiddle

NZ has zero availability with CX onward from Hong Kong because they're not the same alliance - likewise neither are BA.

The NZ / CX alliance is only between NZ and Hong Kong.

libertyuk

If you are going Asia-Europe, then search for *A award availability on LH/LX/OS/SK (or NH from Japan). CX often has OneWorld availability, but you need QFF or other OneWorld points to redeem (and that's a different matter).

Ellice

Thanks sbiddle for that clarification. I wasn't aware of how those partner arrangements worked.

It's a shame Air NZ won't enable searching online of what is available to be booked via their *A awards chart like most other airlines. You have to make a phone call to them and then *A award availability showing on other sites does not appear to be accessible by Air NZ. It made me wonder what the extent of their contracts are in the *A. Even 9-10 months out they had virtually no availability of BKK-EUR even though there is lots of space showing for that time on UA, ANA, AV award searches.

Ellice

Thanks libertyuk, there is lots of availability Asia-EUR showing for LH/LX etc but when you ring the NZ call centre they say there is no availability for Air NZ for airpoints members to book. I guess NZ airpoints members just have to look to other avenues for that route.

Thai-Kiwi

Ellice

Yes I can understand where you are coming from. The interesting thing is that when I've enquired about Asia-Eur after seeing availability on *A the Air NZ call centre has said 'oh yes I can see availability for that flight', then tried to book it, and then come back and said 'no sorry it's coming back as not being able to be booked' - somewhat BS don't you think...

kyanar

Award searches on the operating carrier's site will always show different from what is available to be booked via another carrier. If you do a search of award bookings on United.com for example, they will show award inventory that is bookable but reserved for MileagePlus members, whereas NZ will have no access to that inventory. Likewise, an Air NZ Discounted Business Class award or Recognition Upgrade will l book into R class, while a StarAlliance redemption will book into I class, which has less available.

StarAlliance does not permit matching status between alliance members. OneWorld and SkyTeam carriers would give you the same response if you were to try an intra-alliance status match. It's not that they didn't want to (though they probably didn't) it's that their contracts say they aren't even allowed to.

Xiaotung

I think we are talking about generic *A partner award availability not the availability of the carrier which owns the programme. The availability of booking class I is supposed to be the same across all *A programmes which has lead me to believe NZ may be intentionally blocking some Star awards because the value of those is too good compared to redeeming points on NZ metal.

I doubt this is in the contract. TK and O6 have both status matched other *A cards in the past.

NZbutterfly

Wouldn't NZ be happy to get rid of APD off their books being used on partner metal? Or does that mean NZ has to open up more awards to partners in which case they may not want to lose revenue seats?

If there's absolutely no partner awards for say a year in advance, at what point does it become false advertising?

Xiaotung

I don't think award spaces need to be reciprocal. I just think NZ want you to spend points on NZ metal which burn much faster. Just compare Star redemption rates with NZ fares. If Star rewards were wide open, who would spend points on NZ when there was a much cheaper choice.

Perhaps most people still think redemption on any seat for sale is a good idea. NZ don't want you to forget that.

Ellice

Agree xiaotung, NZ must have a big airpoints liability they are trying to move off their balance sheet.

It would be interesting to know if anyone has managed to book a star alliance I class partner award through airpoints lately. The lack of online search option via airpoints, for *A partner awards makes this a very opaque exercise for the airpoints consumer.

It appears to me that there is virtually no I class *A award space available to airpoints members, either that, or they are so over priced that they are not worth considering. That Air NZ partner award chart, with it’s per sector pricing and lack of stopover possibility and also the non refundable $100 per person booking fee put it at the bottom of the award redemption offerings out there.

Don’t get me wrong, NZ Airpoints does have some good aspects to it but their award partner redemption chart – and lack of availability- are not one of them.

nzkarit

May be NZ as APD are earn puts $X in the bank to cover it. I would guess their calculation is based on a specific ratio of APD redemption, *A redemption and expiring. If too many people use *A redemption NZ makes a loss. If moved the ratio towards *A redemption they may have to make the earn rate less as they need to put more dollars aside per APD.

Also is this a 1% problem? How many AirPoints members would ever earn enough APD to get *A awards vs putting it towards a single domestic leg? especially seeing for most members the points will expire?

NZ has no real competition for the HVC, so don't really need to look after them. Business travellers aren't going to go to Jetstar. And elites who say after hitting elite each year credit elsewhere, NZ has already go a large sum of money of them already so why chase them for a little more? As some of the flights after elite will still be on NZ

So keeping the APD the way it is, means the people who are more fluid and have a choice between JQ and NZ. Allows them to go I already have some APD, so another flight on NZ means the next one is free vs JQ getting nothing. Yes the HVC will do more flights per year per person but guessing NZ has looked at the numbers and may be(Total HVC seat km) < (Total non HVC seat km). They know they already have the HVC in the bag, so growing the pool of potential pax who are more fluid. This set of people is being targeted as we have seen flexi pay turn up recently to allow people to top up their APD to get a flight.

So what is the business benefit to NZ to offer more *A rewards Vs directing people to spending APD on NZ flights? It wouldn't surprise me if as people buy APD on a flight they bump the fare buckets on that flight sooner to get some more revenue to help counteract the APD spend on that flight.

Ellice

Agree you bring up some valid points. This issue is a result of the monopoly Air NZ basically have over the HVC space in NZ. It does only affect a small amount of people who try to use the *A redemption chart thinking it’s a thing. Clearly NZ had the same view when they cancelled the Elite Xmas gift last year. However, if you ever are in the position to want to use it you will come across the same issues.

Accumulating enough Airpoints to book a redemption is definitely doable.
The upside to Air NZ making more redemptions available would be, maybe more eyeballs on their site, more people on their mailing lists, higher profile amongst frequent flyers around the world and all the other upside that carriers operating in more competitive environments are striving for via their redemption programmes. Anyway, no harm in pointing out a few home truths about the barriers to a part of the Airpoints programme that some may wish to use at some stage. This is, afterall, the Flyertalk forum.