But when you can simply buy APD the Elite APD upgrades become incredibly valuable when you can lodge them for anybody even if you're not flying with them. It's really not surprising that something had to eventually give, although you'd think they'd just limit purchasing APD first).

All my long haul Business fares last year were paid but I enjoyed being able to upgrade my family and myself trans Tasman on occasions. I did significant travel and exceeded the Banked year. I do value the confirmed Elite APD upgrades as a significant benefit - probably the most significant - and despite not having used these for long haul think its likely I will at some point in the future. I was thus disappointed when I saw the recent price increases.

The NZ pricing for long haul J often exceeds others by thousands even during a sale and their long haul connections aren’t always ideal and will be worse with the demise of LHR. Even now looking at booking some European cities brings up routes which include non *A options that earn no APD/SP despite expensive fares - e.g. CX HKG-LHR. While flights which leave New Zealand or arrive here generally earn, many connecting/onward flights don’t which makes staying Elite harder for many. The loss of LAX-LHR will likely exacerbate this if the ‘Qualifying Partner’ list isn’t expanded. Aside from the security travelling on one PNR provides in case of delay of previous flight, if one is covered by appropriate insurance it will be tempting to book flights from/to NZ which earn, then onward/preceding flights with another alliance/program so one actually earns recognition - paying high fares for little or no recognition/benefits is not a great option. If it all gets too hard Elites will leave and not bother maintaining status. I think once they leave it will be hard for NZ to get them back.

The quality of NZ Business Hard product is far below some cheaper alternatives and I think they will lose many Elites if they remove confirmed upgrades and don’t address the loss of LHR/connections in terms of increasing the list of Qualifying Partners.

Booked today - two pax WLG to LAX and return PE sale fares plus elite APD upgrades to Business on AKL>LAX and LAX>AKL legs. First choice of dates available for confirmed upgrade, as was second choice of dates (day later out and back). This is for last week in September, usually pretty busy as evidenced by these dates always being excluded from any economy sale. Elite and non-status elite partner.

It makes me smile when I read the posts on this thread, talking about R Class. That used to be the booking class for the BA Concorde back in the 70's in the BA Boadicea automated reservations system.

Cheers to you all.

I'm starting to wonder whether they aren't releasing R class on 787 routes only. It seems to be the common denominator in the reports so far.

I think you're right. My recent R class bookings have all been on 777s. So I phoned NZ to check for R class on various dates between September and December on 787 flights between Auckland and Singapore, Seoul, Narita, and New York. It didn't take too long but I calculated that we covered a total of 240 individual flights: 106 morning flights to Singapore, 54 night flights to Singapore, 14 flights to Seoul, 20 flights from Narita, 23 flights to New York, and 23 flights from New York. There was only 1 R class available across all of these 787 flights - on 1 October to Seoul!

Okay. I'm starting to think this could be because of the current 787 woes. Maybe they will release R class seats once the situation becomes more clear as they don't want to risk having to honour R class bookings if they downgauge plane types.

Most of these routes are 787 routes though so that doesn't stack up.. And destinations such as ORD and EWR can only be flown by a code2 787 so would never be swapped out with anything else. EWR could easily be a case of R class in BP already having been taken for the first few weeks of the new route.

There does seem to be something going on here though..

Maybe anticipating ongoing 787 trouble and having to use/dry lease/wet lease CX/SQ/AC. Sounds low chance but consider the HKG flights are now CX operated you may find NZ have to pay CX for J space and so only want pax who've paid full whack

Here’s something else strange. I applied for 2x Elite APD upgrades for a flight that had A7. The upgrade didn’t confirm straight away. Called NZ and asked for them to push it through and they said they can’t as now there is an automated system that checks daily and allocates the upgrades. I’ll hang up and call again but not a great sign.

I wonder if that means PE upgrades will now clear automatically in situations where A (or R as well) isn't available at the time of booking but is subsequently?

Historically when A class hasn't been available at time of booking but becomes available at a later date you've had to call to get upgrades clear.

Seems strange that it didn’t clear automatically when there were 7 seats available in A for that flight. As a point of reference, today I also used an RU to go to Business and there was R available and it was confirmed upon application as is expected. Yet the Elite APD upgrade didn’t...

How did you see A7 availability? Was via GDS

What do you see as PE booking class if you try a dummy booking with that flight?

A7 availability via EF and A is the booking class when doing a dummy booking for that flight

In my experience not all PE upgrades will clear just because A is showing as a promo fare. I've had times where it has, and other times (such as my saga I posted about last year where A class kept appearing overnight every night for 5 days and then kept disappearing) where I lodged upgrades that didn't clear immediately that I then called and they were cleared manually.

In both cases CSRs couldn't understand how I could see there was A class availability just by looking on the Air NZ website.