ClanJ

Am looking at using air dollars for a booking Stockholm/Berlin. For the date I want airpoints wants $250 in air dollars and cash $69 for taxes on SAS. On the SAS site same flight/date/time/baggage the cost is $168 including taxes.Can anyone enlighten me on why such a difference in cost. Makes using air dollars a waste of time really..

Thai-Kiwi

Does the SAS booked flight include bags? meal? The Airpoints ticket will. Perhaps this is the reason?

NZbutterfly

While we're on it, anyone notice Singapore Airlines disappear from long haul? Or more importantly know when it will be back? Or even why it's disappeared? It's been a few weeks at least. Current option is to fly via China for an extra 800APD.

Beano

but not all flights go that way some are a lot cheaper
I brought two tickets shanghai to Tokyo
Paying cash on the website was approx $200 more than using airpoints (the airpoints were one way economy one business. Cash was both economy)

libertyuk

While we're at it, significant inflation in the cost of Star Alliance reward flight costs coming in under a month:

Singapore KrisFlyer lifts Star Alliance business class reward rates

henrus

Often you can't compare award and cash bookings like for like. Biggest difference for me is the flexibility, often award seats can be changed at a minutes notice with minimal cancelation/change fees. In NZ's case it's $60 to change and $100 to cancel which is often much less than the fees airlines want for a cash ticket. Another point to note, on most *A carriers economy class reward bookings are treated as full fare (so include baggage, meal, entertainment etc)

For most short flights it doesn't make sense and I've never used Airpoints on Star Alliance flights (they make it too hard for Australian accounts) however I have used SQ miles on NZ operated flights before.

12,500 SQ miles (~value $125) and $125 taxes from Australia to NZ which is around $250 for a oneway Economy flight and more than what NZ was charging for a seat only ticket on the same flight. In this circumstance booking with saved me as I needed to change (ended up in need of a China domestic flight instead) and SQ ended up giving a refund of the taxes (minus the change fee and the new $10 domestic taxes).

milehighclubnz

Cash/revenue and loyalty currencies/liabilities (miles/points/upgrades) bookings are two different systems and concepts. You gotta know what works for you and take advantage when you can.

Your example of BER-ARN in Y wasn't a good use of Airpoint Dollars at the time when you booked/searched. Try again 5-7 days before the departure and the cash/revenue ticket would likely cost a lot more, and make using APD worthwhile, if there was availability.

SQ,LH and TP became unavailable online since late Feb I believe. TG has never been available online. There were issues with booking SQ,TG and TP with UA Mileage Plus last month as well.

Before the "enhancement", SQ short haul all classes, including Suites, and mid-haul Y and J, were bookable with APD online. Long haul was only available in Y, EXCEPT SIN-AKL v.v., for which J and F were bookable. For AP$2000+NZ$85.05 taxes, in late Jan I booked and flew SIN-AKL in SQ's A380 Suites Class in mid-Feb.

You need to call Airpoints to feed them the availability (segments) you see on UA/AC/NH's Star award search engines for those "offline" Star airlines like TG,SQ,LH,etc, as well as EY and VS.

NZbutterfly

Very true. You have to compare cash rate to APD rate. But if you have APD coming out your ears then using APD is worth it if it doesn't affect other future travel.

Partner award rates are currently fixed with NZ rather than dynamic as some other programmes are. Cash rates vary with loads/demand.

I find it a lot harder to accrue KF miles so using NZ APD on NZ has generally been a better option. Accept this isn't the case for everyone.

I figured J/F was bookable online due to the JV so we scored something unique. Alas... short lived.
I haven't checked AC/NH. Happy to check SQ/UA/NZ/LM for *A but I haven't signed up to every airline search engine. Figure I'll call NZ and ask them to waste their own time searching while I have them on speaker phone and do something else. I have a limit to how many searches I'll do. Admittedly still using SQ KF miles for SQ. But I was eyeballing APD for SQ in the future. 1300 J seems a good rate.

EY is easy to search but ultimately have to rely on NZ seeing it. I was told EY releases to NZ at 6 months.

milehighclubnz

Has anyone had luck redeeming Airpoint Dollars online or offline on ANY SQ flights in 2019? They have been invisible online for the best part of the year as far as I know; same with LH F. Would love to burn AP$ for those again!

Gonna try riding an upper class virgin, and EY A380 apartment (which is not hard to get if you have the AAdvantage). Are they unicorns or actually bookable through Airpoints call centre?

Xiaotung

I have never seen a single SQ reward seat on any route in any class on any date. Either NZ is doing it on purpose or an IT issue that they have no intention of fixing. I have also called and tried a number of EY and VS rewards that were available to Velocity but not to Airpoints.

Lpmnz

Xiaotung

https://www.airnewzealand.co.nz/airl...r-reward-chart

NZbutterfly

jawnbc

I have! I'm flying DUB TK x/IST TK x/SIN SQ AKL in business class in mid-November. Booked it months ago. Last year I managed it partially to Europe using my Aeroplan points: AKL SQ X x/SIN SQ I x/IST TK LIS. Only the AKL SIN was in economy. But the SIN IST flight was a terrible departure time (02h).

Lpmnz