bce1

Just had a July flight to LAX change from a 787 to a 777-300 today!!
Nice to see.

cavemanzk

The hunger games over the 18J and 21PE seats are coming to a end.

The 46 J seats and 50 PE seats will be a welcome sight when trying to book trips now.

Thai-Kiwi

Not soon enough for me sadly, I fly in the first week of June

SeaProf

My AKL-MEL Shorthaul upgrade from PE to Business in August was just approved, as was my AKL-LAX Recognition upgrade from PE to Business in September.

NZbutterfly

Given there seem to be only 3x 773s total left in the fleet which I'd expect to remain on the popular LAX route and swing through to the Tasman, pretty much every other route is a hunger games route.
The 789s with their 1-1-1 layout and overall reduced J and PE seating capacity compared to the 777s means there are less paid seats to select from overall and therefore less RUs or elite APD upgrades able to clear. It's effectively a devaluation of the programme. Not to mention due to capacity constraints there aren't really any sweet spot fares long haul even in economy so instead of your APD getting you 2 trips it may only get you 1. Or you'll only afford short haul trips with APD.

It wasn't their aim I'm sure but it's effectively what Air NZs fleet means to me until they get their new/refurbed planes with 1-2-1 layouts. But who wants to take an aircraft out of circulation now for refurb when travel is coming back? All 789s are flying. They're still doing cargo flights and flying to Asian countries with restricted/closed borders. It's not like Air NZ is starting any new routes or has additional airport slots into current routes. The lack of a 1-2-1 layout is hurting Air NZs bottom dollar ... and also the value of the program. I was looking at Uniteds layouts on their aircraft and they have much larger business cabins eg 773 has a whopping 60 J seats! No wonder they can afford to release award seats. I don't expect Air NZ to go for 60 J seats but they really need to hurry up with that new J cabin. There is SFO - MEL on the 7th June for 1600 APD/NZD32 if anyones interested. At this rate your company is better off buying APD and using them to fly United to Australia, NZ or PPT to get you home. The partner portal has "some" benefit... IF you can actually find the award seat.

I always forget to make the suggestion that unused RUs should not expire but rather fall into the travellers account in the form of APD. Anyway, IMO the program isn't looking great and won't be for some time yet with the limited premium capacity the 789s offer.

Just my 2 cents at a glance.

p.s. is there any chance any of the stored 777s will return??

cavemanzk

There was an interview yesterday one 1News with the NZ CEO. He was saying the were caught out by the government reopening the boarder so fast, as it wasn’t what they had been told from
the government.

They are currently working hard to get the 5x 77Ws stored in desert back into service earlier than planned. It apparently takes around 4months to prep a 77W from long term storage to return.

sbiddle

The isn't isn't just bringing the plane back. Its mostly retraining pilots and cabin crew.

Many pilots took redundancy and won't come back. Others got moved down to the Airbus fleet and need to be retrained - but you can't just do that without people to take their spot on the Airbus fleet.

Air NZ are also going to be looking for hundreds of cabin crew and they all take time to train. In the tight labour market we're in they may even find it challenging.