NZbutterfly

Which EY flight number carries through to Europe? I've always thought that would be amazing value. Have you found EY Guest seats for both sectors? Would be interested to see how that pans out.

There's definitely star alliance availability showing in searches where you should be able to use your APD for partner rewards on *A carriers. Really depends on the route. I haven't searched EY for a long time.

libertyuk

The time I've booked partner tickets on that route I used APD on Europe-Asia (NRT on LH ) and a separate ticket to Australia/NZ (TYO-Australia on ANA). China and Japan are about the only routes there is premium class availability at times on some routes though. In Y there would be more availability, but that's a waste of APD given fares can be cheaper than the APD *A partner redemption price. Unaware of any single flight number service at all between Europe and Australasia, other than NZ1/2 and (outside Airpoints) QF 1/2, QF 9/10 and BA 15/16. There used to be VS via HKG (available on APD at the time), but that route has been gone a while.

NZbutterfly

What stinks is it's on the partner reward chart. Not sure what flights they're alluding to in that particular reward as the flight numbers change depending on the region your flying to so from Oz/NZ they'll have one number but they change the flight number from Asia/Americas for the sector onwards to the EU so how can that particular reward flight exist?
I also dislike the fine print for travel on Virgin Atlantic stating for PE use the Business APD award and for J use the First class award.
There are some strange partner routings like EU-HNL/PPT. Can't think of any partners that fly that route.
South America - Australia. Only QF/LA & NZ so no partners.
Central America - Australia? Who flies that? That's like offering Antarctica as a destination and saying it's 200APD but NO ONE flies there!

I think I read something about these values being per sector but they look really painful when you combine them.

There look to be some awards that are usable with decent value but that chart needs an overhaul.

EDIT: SQ's SIN-FRA-JFK (5th freedom?) looks to be SQ26 the whole way as does another 5th freedom route. Still can't think of any flights that work for NZ/Oz-EU that would be 5th freedom?

libertyuk

I doubt NZ spends much attention to maintain this, as it doesn't make it easy to redeem these awards. VS is, of course, a rip off in APD terms. VS thinks Upper Class is like First Class, which is ridiculous. It's a good business class, but given it uses the same seats NZ has and its main special feature is the LHR Clubhouse, it's hardly worth redeeming on VS with APD.
Having said that, the APD business class redemption rate Europe-Asia is pretty good value as is first if you can get it, even acknowledging that SQ is unavailable because of its own rules on the aircraft it blocks for redemptions. Grabbed FRA-NRT a few years ago in LH first, which was a complete delight.

MightyTravels

Anyone book an EY award lately - agents can't see ANY EY space even if it shows available as 'Guest Seats' and AA can see it (and book it).

Ellice

Sounds about par for the course. Air NZ agents can never see availability that you see on other sites. So even though a sweet spot, zero availability.

I would hesitate with EY premium. There's quite a negative experience in the comments section of the EY premium over at Keith's PH's review of EY Business class where someone is saying he will never again fly EY again and goes into details about why from his experience. It appears that there has been a lot of cost cutting with EY even in the premium cabins since that review was written on EY business.

MightyTravels

I agree I'm not a huge fan of EY but it often has no YQ and beats ET (the only other airline with availability).