nzkarit

As per that spreadsheet which was percentage change for each route and booking class. The APD earn didn't change.

For all those saying this or that about redemption. Why stay with Airpoints? Why not just use a different *A loyalty program where you can get your redemptions? If redemption is important why not pick a loyalty program that gives you the benefits that you want?

Xiaotung

This. It's a frequent flyer programme. Why should it matter to people who don't fly regularly? Join Flybuys.

Thai-Kiwi

Completely wrong. $AP earn is not fixed.

It is strongly linked to price paid (via fare class and fare product), perhaps not in a linear relationship. I haven’t graphed these.

I suggest you take a look for yourself at https://airpoints.co.nz 😀

nzkarit

+1

Most people I talk like just being able to use their points before they expire. Know people who have moved from overseas and enjoy how easy AirNZ has made the using of APD compared to where they came from. The part pay is also a highlight for a lot of people.

Got to remember loyalty for most Airlines is a profit centre and CCs make airlines a lot of money. The ease of use of APD makes it attractive in a lot of eyes to have an APD credit card vs the other options out there. And that gets cash in the door for AirNZ.

nzkarit

No Airpoints like the scheme with another airline (expect things like SQ PPS & similar) is a way of driving revenue to the airline. Credit Card spend is where the revenue is at. That is where the money for Airpoints is coming from not the flying (making assumptions from what have read about other airlines)

Xiaotung

When fares in the same booking class increase, does earn also increase?

sbiddle

Flybuys in NZ is a program for people to buy a toaster or magazine subscription. You can't even book flights easily using Flybuys now and it's not even a promoted benefit of the program.. (You can but you buy a Helloworld voucher from the Flybuys store and then take it a Helloworld store to book).

As others have said the big sell for Airpoints is 3rd party companies and credit cards. Selling points is huge money for Airlines and that's precisely the market in NZ and why so many people who don't fly regularly love the program and using it to book flights.

Xiaotung

I understand all that. I was just pointing out the low value in the any seat on any flight proposition. If a flight redemption is tied to its cash value, it's no different from redeeming a toaster from the Airpoints Store. The ease of use at a hugely inflated cost is hardly a benefit. All FFP's sell points to 3rd party and CC companies but they don't eliminate reward seats.

drajknox

I agree that APD is not fixed but disagree that strongly linked to price paid in that when price per Product&Class combination changes APD doesn’t always increase or decrease with price alteration.

Thai-Kiwi

Whilst I did not define 'strongly', the following illustrates the correlation between fare paid and $AP earned.

Seems pretty linear to me, and hence I think 'strongly linked' is a reasonable description of the relationship between $AP earned for price paid.

JamesBigglesworth

Yeah, nah, I'm going to agree with @sbiddle there and say you're nitpicking there with the fare class claim. The point is what is available, not what fare class is it. And on that front at least NZ do offer (somewhat close to) every seat to members.

The fare classes that *A have normalised for award seats is misleading because NZ simply doesn't have the same programme structure that would *need* to make use of that fare-classes-for-redemption structure. That's the entire reason why NZ doesn't have many seats available for non-NZ *A partners to book: it doesn't need to have those seats classes in their system for programme redemptions, whether to it's own members or partners.

That said, while the availability might nominally be "good" within NZ's programme, the earn rate to get to the burn stage is still terrible IMO and has worsened with the price rises. I still think the programme is terrible overall. I can only see a very, very narrow use case for it where it might make sense. Upgrades might be more acheiveable in earn/burn, but that's really not a good measure of a programme IMO. And especially not when it's still cheaper for me to buy points with actual money on another programme and still cheaper to then garb a *A upgrade or seat outright within that programme. As I mentioned up thread, there's a good reason carriers such as Agean and Avianca have so many non-resident members in their programmes.

Very obviously, YMMV.

drajknox

The point I was making is that when the price for a certain price/product increases due to “cost pressures” etc the APD$ earn generally doesn’t.

Xiaotung

I disagree that the lack of normalised *A redemption classes (namely O, I, X) at NZ is due to the structure of the Airpoints programme but rather they made you believe so under the disguise of a different programme currency than others. If you look at the occassional Business seats that partners do release to NZ (or rather NZ do not block), it costs just APD1600 for a long haul flight. Whereas on NZ's own service, it's whatever the retail fare is. NZ could choose to release some I class seats to Airpoints members albeit however limited but they prefer not to.

As more and more programmes move to add dynamic burn option closely tied to retail fares (in addition to traditional redemption classes) such as QF, can we claim that all these programmes suddenly offer 100% reward availibility as well? I don't think a regular QF flyer would agree with that. It's for this reason that I insist that NZ offer close to 0% reward availibility.

I find people incredibly tolerant of anything NZ does here, which is why I guess NZ have been able to get away with a crappy programme and an outdated cabin for so long. I joined this forum in 2005, way earlier than most and know all too well how Airpoints works. Give me some credit here.

JamesBigglesworth

lol. You have NO idea about me, do you?

Sorry, but I don't tend to accept "Trust me, bro!" as a valid logical standard. Especially not when a lot of that argument hinges on "I want to define X in a way that suits my argument but isn't what ANYONE else has been saying in the discussion." I'm more kinda data and fact driven, I guess. I'm just stubborn that way, y'know.

And that's me done with this thread.

Kiwi_FF

I understand that there has been a significant investment in changes to Airpoints to be announced in June. No idea what they may be.