aubreyjiminez

My mistake - I've just tried that again to find a few business seats still available. I may have chosen the other flight time for that day when trying the dummy booking I described above. Does anyone know if they reserve any Business seats for RU or just allocate any they haven't sold?

kiwicyclo

Your RU upgrades are behind my APD upgrade.. . .. Live in hope! . . . #jokes

I only switched to this flight yesterday as was originally from AKL - IAH on the 24th April . . .

nzkarit

If people will pay for them they will take paying pax. Hence the RUs and OneUps often not being confirmed until they gate. Sometimes if there is more free room in the cabin they will confirm some earlier.

Tonyrsc

S.H

Our flight was cancelled and they couldn’t put us on the 9:30pm earlier flight as we need 4 business class seats and they only had 2 left.
Rebooked for Thursday with a layover in Auckland for one night.
Does anyone know if and how much AirNZ pays for food allowance for 2 days and 4 ppl.
Call center was useless and just said they needed ‘approval’ for everything

NZbutterfly

There's a saying - cash is king. It's true. Upgrades will never trump a fare paying passenger. With all the disrupts rescheduling, shuffling of passengers around I would lower my hopes for upgrades coming through. Although I have done dummy bookings to check seats previously I wouldn't rely on that right now as these are totally different circumstances. There might be 5 seats free one day but next moment they could easily reallocate these to disrupted passengers.

Whatever it is you're expecting in value for food vouchers - lower it. Flights and accommodation are priority, food not so much. If you're lucky maybe you receive a hotel and NZ just say it's buffet breakfast free and here's a voucher or something for lunch dinner. I would count on paying a bit extra out of your own pocket as a top up for a nice meal.

We were stuck in Tonga and bussed to a hotel which provided all food. It wasn't anywhere near the town but I'd already seen town anyway. We stayed at least 2 nights. The food was the same every day! I would gladly have paid for something different but I was too cheap to pay for a cab back towards town and there was nothing else in the area. At least nothing I saw on the bus on the way in.

For my own sanity with your layover time I would leave the hotel / airport area if ok with the group. Other eating / activity options instead of the hotel: eating at the airport, there's a shopping centre by Ibis and maybe some cafes on the street behind, or taking skybus into town. Cheap cabs provide a fixed fare. There's a yellow bus for $6? that goes between airport hotels back to the airport if you want to eat there. I liked the Macs bar? on the departure level and have eaten there a couple of times. I don't recommend driving after long haul.

Kiwi Flyer

Highly likely there will still be disruptions in 3 weeks' time. However, it is not necessarily the changes that will be made by NZ will be the same different to the ones announced for this week.

nzkarit

Also now they know how many 789s are out, when the wet leases are turning up, and what RR's parts timeline is, so they should be able to put the long term schedule.

Kiwi Flyer

Sorry I should have said same, not different.

There are still lots of unknowns for Air NZ to manage - e.g. ETOPS changes, flight loads, availability of alternative flights for rebooking passengers, passenger choices about cancelling or changing flights, length of time the aircraft will be out (and knock-on effects on maintenance schedules), etc.

I.e. I expect there will be fluidity in the schedule for some time to come.

zoovet

My wife and I are travelling on NZ6 on our way to London on 10 May, and realise that the flight may also leave early. I note from the AirNZ website that the earlier departing time , and the change from NZ6 to NZ4, now occurs daily until 5 May. Presumably Air NZ may have to extend this further on in the month. Fortunately it doesn't worry us one way or the other, as long as we catch the flight!