sonyxperiageek

Hello folks, so i have a bit of a dilemma that I need your help with please. So I have 1 GE RU I need to use by the 4 Feb, then my GE renews and I believe I get another 2 RU. Am planning a trip to Guangzhou with another PAX on the same PNR and trying to work out what's the best way to maximize my use of Elite benefits such as RUs and APD upgrades so that we can both get upgraded. Is it true that I cannot easily combine a RU and APD upgrade for the Robot to automatically clear if A or R class is available after calling the call centre? Is the best way for me to just lodge APD upgrades for there and back after calling the call centre and checking for A and R availability?

Thanks in advance!

JayKiwi

You cannot combine RU and APD upgrade instruments on the same upgrade, ie, deploying one of each simultaneously to jump from Y to J in one go.

Thai-Kiwi

Let’s assume you have already booked (Y or PE and looking to go up one cabin category)

If you lodge your current period RU AKL-PVG for yourself, then you’d need to call AirNZ to gift/lodge an Elite APDU for the other pax. This is a manual process and there is no way the robot will clear in advance even if there is A or R this (bitter personal experience from myself, and others). It might, or might not. This is the glitch with mixed upgrade instruments on the same PNR problem. It’d be better to just use APDU forboth of you, but that means throwing away the current year RU.

For the return, when you have your two next period RUs, then this is a straight forward situation, and if A/R is available the upgrades will clear immediately (or within a day or 2) for both of you.

Just remember that your new period RUs won’t land in your account for about a month after re-qualification date. (re-qual date < status expiry date)

As others have noted, you can’t stack different upgrade instruments to go Y to J.

sbiddle

I read that as 1 pax with RU and 1 pax with APD upgrade.

I detailed the issue late last year after booking a trip to Seoul and doing the same thing. Air NZ told me that the robot will not process mixed upgrades and these have to be manually processed by the tier support team. It took multiple calls over around 9 days or so to have upgrades manually cleared by the tier support team despite there being availability over the entire period.

Obviously YMMV and it's possible things could have changed by then.. Or maybe haven't changed since then we simply don't know since there really is no clear understanding or transparency around them.

Thai-Kiwi

As above, my sister and her daughter had the same issue (2 pax same PNR, 1x RU and 1x gifted EAPDU). Except by the time it was looked some 3 weeks worth of calls/email exchanges, the available upgrade class had already gone.

One very annoyed Elite. She emailed CEO and others as a part of the process, and needed to follow-up to even get a response (Foran did apologise). However, AirNZ denied there was any issue such as @sbiddle has described above.

They finished by trying to tell her that the RU she had lodged was from when she was Gold, and so it could not be cleared in advance despite her now being Elite. Anybody ever heard that before?!

sonyxperiageek

Thanks guys. I guess more disappointing news. They really do make it as difficult as possible so that you have to spend actual money with them! Well played, but I guess that's what happens when you become "loyal" to them.

tairantei

I had this issue with 2 R Class available for my wife and I but as we both were on same booking it didn’t instant upgrade us. We split the booking, and then applied APD and R class upgrade and it went through instantly.

i would call them and split the bookings.. then make sure you have R class and use the RU and use APD, robot will upgrade you instant if R class available