Sounds contradictory. If you�re in quarantine you should not be in any public place even for snacks.

 

Quarantine is for symptomatic people. Managed self isolation for everyone crossing border.

 

I assume you mean "managed isolation" which is the term being used for everybody entering NZ? Everybody who enters the country is isolated for 14 days in accommodation organised by the Government.

Self isolation was when people who entered could self isolate at home upon entering the country.

 

Yep managed isolation

 

Quarantine in Australia is managed by the individual states so ymmv but Sydney seemed a lot more officious than NZ. The processing was inefficient and took 4 hours from landing till getting to the room. NZ took 45 minutes. In Sydney we were accompanied to our rooms by someone from the Navy and not given the key/card and not able to leave. In NZ we are free to move around the hotel grounds and outside in a designated area. The food in Sydney wasn't as good as it is here and featured a lot more things like packets of chips and biscuits, but had the advantage of being able to order room service meals and Uber etc which is not available here.

No choice, correct. I had some snacks leftover from the 20 hour road journey to get to my departure point. I brought my own coffee and coffee paraphernalia as well as steel cutlery, and I would highly recommend doing this if you find yourself in a situation where you expect to be put into "managed isolation" or quarantine.

There is no direct cost to me but I believe my ~2 months away this trip would have netted the government about 10x the cost of my stay in tax revenue They do cater to special dietary needs but I'm not sure what exactly that looks like.

They'll lift it for $160. Incidentally the belts are switched off at Sydney so passengers have to load their own bags onto a trailer. My luggage tags from my point of origin say 23 and 5kg. I must have been wearing heavier clothes that day.

The wine is at our cost. We're allowed 1 bottle of wine or 4 beers per person per day. It's $20 a bottle for Yealands which appears to be about $15 worth at the supermarket so I think they're being reasonable about it. Beer is $5 but they've run out of everything apart from Steinlager Light. Interestingly, Coke is also $5 per can unless that's a mistake. There is a very limited snack menu - biscuits, chips, chocolate. We're able to order from Countdown online, but not things like Uber Eats.

Edit: as of tomorrow we're allowed to order Uber...but there only seem to be two restaurants available - Carl's Jr and a curry place.

We can't go to supermarkets. We can shop online and the hotel will pick up our "click and collect" orders for us on certain days. The rooms don't have any cutlery or crockery, or a microwave or toaster etc so I'm probably not going to bother.

 

Interesting they ration your booze! presume that also means that you cannot order click and collect wine and beer then either? Did they check what you brought with you? If you have some bottles of duty free liquor would they let you bring that with you to the room (both here and in AU?)?

 

No bag checks anywhere but also all the duty free shops were closed.

No alcohol deliveries are allowed here, not sure about Australia - they didn't mention anything.

 

Just got an email which included this "some exciting activity for our Airpoints programme" those don't inspire confidence........

 

I am so excited to buy a $2000 TV and get 10 airpoints again

 

I have managed to push most things through my Airpoints Credit Card since lock down, 150+ SP this month will see me bank that extra year!

 

Market update: https://www.nzx.com/companies/AIR/announcements

Mostly already heard most of it.

 

Mostly about refunds:
https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/progr...flight-credits

Though on the online credit redemption:
Shifted from June to late July Annoying as the bulk value of my credits is Trans Tasman and long haul, so would really like the ability to split/merge, as would like to use them on domestic flights. My understanding split/merge credits is currently not available on the phone and waiting for this series of changes to be in place to allow it.

If AirNZ wants to gets people flying the online redemption with split/merge is a good way as there is money there to spend.

 

The article says "The airline has refunded flights to or through the US and anywhere else it will not fly again, like Buenos Aires, but has refused to refund the cost of other tickets, offering credits instead".

I don't think that's entirely accurate. I made multiple phone calls and sent multiple emails trying to get a full refund for our flights to Buenos Aires that they'd cancelled. They were absolutely insistent that my wife & I had to cancel our tickets and so pay the ticket cancellation fee of $300 AUD each. We were always entitled to do this under the conditions of carriage if we'd wanted to cancel for any reason, but I don't accept that we were truly the party cancelling here.

 

I was able to get a couple of credited domestic bookings merged to one future booking last week via the phone (and paid the difference on CC), although there was some confusion with merging Seat Only and Seat + Bag bookings, but eventually they just took the total value across, someone else reviewed it and two days later my booking appeared.
This was before (I think) they implemented their online credit call back form submission for credit booking requests, it was the first time the call centre worker had done the process (I could hear him reading through a manual),and obviously domestic rather than TT, so YMMV.

 

The longer the push out the availability of online credit redemption the better their financial position becomes, better being a loose term. It is in Air NZ best interests (not the customers) to make it as commercially difficult to take up those credits . . . from a brand reputation point of view, disasterious.