mtimmer

Flying AKL-LAX (departs at 20:15) in mid December and will arrive in AKL from ZQN on a separate ticket. My normal practice in such a situation would be to play it safe and arrive the night before, but this time I'm contemplating a same day connection of 6 or 8 hours. My thinking is that if the ZQN-AKL flight is more or less on time, we'll head to the Botanic Gardens for a couple of hours. And if the ZQN flight is late, well then we still have a pretty good buffer. As a *G, we'll have lounge access if we need to kill some time in AKL. (And of course, open to other ideas on spending excess time in or near AKL...)

I know everyone's risk tolerance is different, but looking for feedback from those more familiar with the routes and airports involved.

kiwifrequentflyer

I leave myself four hours when booking a separate ticket when I fly LAX to AKL for my domestic flight, so that seems fine to me. But I also have never not had the Air NZ agent not link them when I check in for my LAX flight. However, I only remember that being a policy guaranteed for elites, so if you are not elite, I wouldn't necessarily count on it.

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mtimmer

For better or worse, I'm about as common as they come. I'm also under the impression that NZ won't check my luggage through on separate tickets.

sbiddle

Out of curiosity why would you actually buy separate tickets?

mtimmer

I'm sure this is more than you want to know, but we ended up changing our trip from October and in doing so it also changed the timing of our internal travels within New Zealand in that we were ending up on the South Island rather than in Auckland. The return flight was a paid flight in PE (outbound was a mileage award in business) and it was changeable for a $50 fee, but unfortunately that didn't allow me to change the routing. Cancelling and re-booking to a new routing from ZQN was subject to a $200 fee (times two). FWIW, the cost of two separate tickets was in the same ballpark as the cost of ZQN-AKL-LAX when I checked.

As it turned out, the website wouldn't allow me to change the dates on my own, so I had to call in and they let me change the dates on the flight for no charge--I think the agent took pity on me for being on hold for four hours.

nzkarit

Also with the cancellation at the moment due to staff sickness, I would leave more of a buffer, with other flight options. Given the load factors now & load factors going forward as doing 1.5% of flights there is not likely going to be room on the next flight. Especially seeing seperate tickets their goal will be to get you to AKL not get you to the LAX (or another NA flight)

Kiwi Flyer

6 hours is normally fine, I typically allow 4 hours for separate tickets domestic and international at AKL. However, these aren't normal times. You have two key risks - cancellation of your ZQN to AKL flight due to weather disruption or crew. If the flight is cancelled you are not guaranteed to get to AKL same day. For this reason, if it is important to you to make the international flight I would fly up the day before.

mtimmer

I appreciate your take and it's exactly what I'll need to weigh. Since the flights are several months away, I can also see how things develop. I don't need the risk to be 0%, but ideally it would be <5%.

Mwenenzi

ZQN is a small airport- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queenstown_Airport
If ZQN AKL does not fly what are the options?
Later flight on NZ or JQ (if any exist)?
Drive to CHC or DUD or IVC? And then fly if you can get a flight
A map from Great Circle Mapper - Great Circle Mapper

Thai-Kiwi

I suggest you buy a FlexiRefund ticket now for the day prior, and consider that 'insurance'. You can cancel anytime and NZ processes refunds within 48 hours.

Additionally, do the same thing for the intended day of travel. Now you have the options bracketed and you can decide later which option you want to take.

If cost is a significant consideration then look to buy the 'cheaper' fare classes F, P, K or X. This can be done on grabaseat.co.nz which will sometimes have cheaper fare classes available than on NZ;'s website.

If these are no cheaper fares immediately available, then monitor regularly for sales and if a cheaper flight comes up, then book the cheaper fare as FlexiRefund, and cancel the higher priced one. You can iteratively gain a lower fare doing this repeatedly (if you can be bothered!). There are no issues buying the cheaper fare in advance of cancelling the more expensive fare (ie no issues with duplicate names for a few hours).

gcuk

When I have separate tickets, I don’t only consider the time between the flights, I make sure there is another flight to my intermediate change point after my booked flight.

LyingFlat

That’s odd. I assume this is a OW ex-NZ fare? If so routing changes are normally permitted provided that the new fare is of equal or greater value than the original fare. I’ve done this many times myself without an issue. If you can bear it I would call again and press the agent to add on the ZQN flight.

NZ have hired a lot of new agents recently so you probably got someone who didn’t know what they’re talking about.

cavemanzk

Ive also found the agents working the NZ what’s app account, are pretty skilled. Just send them all the details of what you are trying todo and flights to chance too, and they are pretty good and sorting and comming back to you within 48hrs

mtimmer

If I were to go with the flight with 8 hours in between there would be four more flights on NZ that could get me to AKL that day. (Plus an additional one on Jetstar.) As per a comment above, the concern would be if I couldn't actually get on one of those flights! FWIW, we both have Star Alliance Gold status, but I'm sure that's not worth anything on NZ in regard to IRROPS.
I had planned on buying a fully refundable/changeable ticket--but I did not think about buying one for each day! Thank you for that idea.

When I tried to change the flight online prior to calling in, it wasn't giving me an option to change my departure point, which surprised me. So I looked up the rules for fare code "O" and read this:

VOLUNTARY CHANGES TO THE ONE WAY DATE OF TRAVEL AND/OR TICKETED ROUTING ARE PERMITTED AT A CHARGE
OF NZD50 PER ONE WAY FARE PROVIDED ALL OTHER FARE CONDITIONS ARE MET NO FARE DOWNGRADE OCCURS AND
TICKETED ORIGIN AND/OR DESTINATION DOES NOT CHANGE.

I'm far from an NZ expert, so if I'm mis-interpreting the above let me know. And I'm *extremely* appreciative of all the feedback I'm getting here!

Ellice

I’d also check whether it’s the start end or middle weekend of NZ school holidays. Queenstown flights can be full on those dates and disruptions can cause havoc. There can even be fog in Auckland. I have an on the day changeable AKL-WLG fare recently and for the first time on a Sunday at the end of school holidays was unable to change it to later in the day due to all the flights being full.