natter

Hi all
Just wanted to run something past those that know more about airpoints than me. I'm new to AirNZ.
Recently flew MEL-AKL-IAH-DEN return with NZ/UA.
Works deluxe (Y) for MEL-AKL, business (J) for the rest.

By my calculations on the airpoints calculator this should have scored me the following status points:
MEL-AKL = 104
AKL-IAH = 304
IAH-DEN = 50.
So on a return trip >900 and therefore Gold. Not the intention of the itinerary but a happy coincidence when I sat down and worked it out.
However, for the outbound portion I've been credited 296 status points as an all in one MEL-IAH route.
Is this normal? I've never had a FF programme that's not credited status points for each individual leg of the itinerary?
Bizarrely, on the inbound I've had the IAH-AKL credit separately as I expected with 304 SP. The AKL-MEL leg hasn't appeared in my account yet (flight was <72 hours ago).

I've spoken to the call centre who said they'd raise it but didn't seem to really know anything.

Can anyone more in the know explain if AirNZ only takes into account origin and destination rather than individual legs for SP?

Mwenenzi

natter Welcome to FT
Air NZ credits on the basis of the "trip" start to end, no matter what the route

Air NZ aipoints is a bad as any ffp can be. Only useful if flying a lot (only) on Air NZ and/or if the NZ fare booking class credits 0% to other ffp and/or can get airpoints from non flying sources
Next time credit to UA ffpr or another Star Alliance ffp

sbiddle

As pointed out SP earn is journey based . You need to enter MEL-IAH to in the calculator. SP earn would have also been shown during the booking.

natter

Thanks for that guys. I'd never used airpoints before it just seemed opportune based on the ability to earn gold status in one trip when I was figuring out where to credit. Obviously should have rung the too good to be true alarms. Never mind, lesson learnt!
I booked through a TA so didn't have the earn rates at booking.

Kiwi Flyer

Also, expect your IAH-AKL for the return to be recalculated as IAH-MEL.

prelude

Just out of curiosity, what if it's a non NZ ticketed journey, would the same thing apply? Also what would happen if you accrued on a different FFP for one leg, and retroactively claimed a separate leg on Airpoints? I have done something similar before but not on a NZ issued ticket.

Kiwi Flyer

The journey principle applies if crediting consecutive legs involving NZ flights to Airpoints, independent of how ticketed. If credit flights to different FFPs then earning reverts to per flight segment.

Balancerider

Kiwi Flyer never mind, I've done some googling.

prelude

On that note, can you split different NZ legs to different FFPs? I once retroactively claimed one leg to NZ, and they gave me the Airpoints for both directions. It worked out for me because I actually lost the boarding pass for one of flights, but I could see someone wanting to accrue one leg one on program and one leg on another.

Maybe I just don't fly enough but some parts of Airpoints is really confusing for the casual flyer.

Mwenenzi

Similar topic in another thread---> Is this ok?

sbiddle

I think you mean Air NZ is confusing for the frequent flyer. 99% of pax are casual who fly Air NZ and belong to Airpoints and that's all that matters. They wouldn't have a clue what a FQTV or FQTS is or even that there are different FPP's than Airpoints that they could credit to. It's only when you start trying to cross credit that things become confusing.

drajknox

Slightly unrelated but discussing different FFPs within a trip - I’ve got an upcoming trip to Madrid - AKL-LAX-LHR-MAD. While the online booking didn’t give me the opportunity to enter a OW FFP for the last leg which is BA and hence not *A the Premium team member was more than happy to enter my QF number for the LHR-MAD segment leaving my NZ FF number earning on all the NZ flights. He couldn’t however give me the BA booking reference and this doesn’t show on my ticket either but interestingly NZ automatically allocated me seat 2A on my BA flights both directions as that is what I had selected with NZ on NZ flights.

prelude

Fair enough. I guess the only people that might find Airpoints valuable are the ones that fly Air NZ and fly it a lot, and at that point, you don't really have to understand it. Personally, I'm don't fly in premium cabins, but I fly enough in economy on *A that I can get *G on virtually any other mileage based FFP (maybe not M&M or MP), but if I accrued with Air NZ, I would barely get *S. I only bother claiming on AP on TT and domestics, and it's still confusing to me how a TT flight can be worth less a one way domestic.

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sbiddle

They're not really less. Remember SP earn is exclusive of tax, and that flights between NZ and AU are some of the highest taxed routes in the world.

If you look at say a WLG-SYD for $341 (current sale that I booked) $198 of that is tax and $142 goes to Air NZ. You get 7 SP each way for those flights, and would get 8 SP on a typical $69 main trunk NZ domestic jet service and 4 SP on a $69 regional domestic service (yes I know that's not allowing for NZ domestic tax but that's not factored in the same way - a $89 flight inside NZ will still only give 8 / 4 SP)

Some of the full fare economy and discounted BP fares on TT routes represent some of the best earn rates across the whole network.

prelude

Putting it that way makes more sense now. Would you say that AP is basically a revenue based FFP in disguise?

I guess a reason I get a bit confused is that my TTs are often part of non-NZ ticket that books into something like K or L, which makes it hard to tell how much that segment is 'worth'. Along side the fact that I can rarely take cheap domestics, which means $400 odd for a AKL-WLG return.