brend

Hi all,

I am flying AKL to SIN with my family (2 adults, 2 young kids) in the July school holidays. I paid the extra $200 for the skycouch so in total we still have 4 seats. The seating map says that passengers can sit anywhere but on the receipt/invoice the skycouch is in my name and my partner has the single seat against her name.

I have 2x RU's to use so I applied for an upgrade and my partner will stay with the kids. (don't worry she'll get her turn on the way back )

If the RU clears I assume AIRNZ will just take the single seat away so my wife and 2xkids will be in the skycouch? or have I potentially voided the skycouch by applying the RU as the receipt shows the skycouch against my name.

Cheers

JANZFlyer

I would make sure that you are sitting in the "single" seat - just in case there is not an issue. easy to make a sky couch if they are sitting in a sky couch row.
FYI - one sky couch.. depending on the age of the children is not going to be very comfortable! I would give up the upgrade and buy 2 x sky couch rows! at least the kids can sleep.

based on current J loadings which are full, I doubt in school holidays your upgrade will clear!

brend

A dummy booking showed plenty of space though I understand its not perfect at looking at loadings.
The boys are 2 and 7 so not too big.

I think I'll have to give them a call because it doesn't allow me to move passengers around. Thanks for your comments.

beerandpork

Somehow missed all the replies on this thread.
- I had just forgot to update my FlyerTalk profile, I'm based in Auckland now.
- Looking like I'll be enjoying Premium Economy on my LAX-AKL return flight. 4 days out and the upgrade stills says pending. Zero available J seats when I search on the airNZ website.
- I'm Gold now, should hit Elite this year, very much looking forward to the immediate-upgrade-clearing thing

Side question: we booked a flight from AKL-SYD in Nov. My wife is about to hit Elite status so we were going to use her Gold RUs to go from Y-J but the AirNZ website says "upgrade unavailable". There's plenty of J availability. Any idea what could cause that? Should we try calling?

Thai-Kiwi

I understand for NZ*GE, that the immediate clearing of RUs will only happen if R class is available.
Worse, R class is not searchable, so requires a call to check availability - especially if you plan to book in the hope of immediately clearing.

Pretty sure I have heard that from sbiddle ?

nzkarit

Are you on a 77W or 789 or A320/1 flight? Only the widebodies has J. They are also almost continuously redoing schedule and balancing which flights are widebody and which are narrow depending on demand, which results in seatselect, etc getting locked for a bit..

Beano

When you have 2 RU lodged on the first minute the flight was released (lodged four months ago) and the upgrade is still pending is it worth talking to the contact centre or can not it be reviewed manually?

nzkarit

If they release R class after your RU is requested, you won't get upgraded immediately.

The first person to sub their RU after R class released will get the immediate upgrade.

Not much the call centre can do unless you ring in the Goldilocks zone where R class released & no one has subbed an RU yet and the can manually send it to the RU team to manually apply.

kiwifrequentflyer

A month ago I called the support line. They told me they can no longer do "manual" upgrade tries and if you don't get an upgrade with the automated system, there is nothing further they can do and they can't see R space themselves.

I don't know if this is true, or if they misunderstood my question, or I misunderstood their answer. But my understanding is they can no longer send it to a "RU team" to check over for space.

codyc1515

I had to call 5 times to get someone who understood how to apply an RU on A320 (Economy to Works Deluxe). So don’t hold out hope.

Beckett66

I only use RUs if I can confirm R class is available. Occasionally the phone staff have claimed they can't check for R class anymore. Generally they're really helpful and tell me whether they're available for multiple dates and even routes. These days they say they can't clear RUs themselves and can only lodge them and wait for "the robot" to clear them. So there's a short period after confirming R class availability when you have to hope no one else lodges RUs, whereas you had more immediate certainty in the past. But I won't be using RUs or flying NZ longhaul while their PE prices are so freaking expensive. Unless you're beholden to NZ, there's no real benefit to RUs when you can buy J outright on other airlines for prices comparable to NZ PE. It depends on the route, of course, but I only travel for fun so can adjust where I go.

LyingFlat

A lot of it comes down to who you get on the phone.

They have a lot of new staff who are probably under instructions to not let people know if R is available. I've spoken to to several 'old hands' and they can definitely see if R is there. I did so on a trip to SYD earlier in the year. Booked the flights, submitted my UGs, and they were immediately cleared into R.

Beckett66

True. And I remember now that double RUs from Y to J are still a good option for the flight in 1 direction because Y fares are still affordable.

kiwifrequentflyer

I will be honest, I wondered if this was something that they had just been told to say and thought it was strange that they would have removed the ability to see it for their staff.

LyingFlat

The staff definitely have the ability to see it. With all the new staff, they probably haven't been told how to search for R. NZ use a tool called QikSilver. When searching a city pair, R class won't appear. Instead, the availability will look something like:

C9 D9 Z9 J4

When expanding the view, they can see true availability (but not R/I availability):

C27 D25 Z16 J4

Part of QikSilver allows for the search of a specific booking class (which is the only way to see R). When searching for R, the availability would look like:

C9 R1