Help Getting to New Zealand
 

Hi,

New member here. Thanks to reading some of your suggestions on this forum, had a chance to travel to Buenos Aires this past year, so thank you.

My next adventure is New Zealand, which I'm able to go sometime in March through May 2013.

Was looking for advice on flying to New Zealand from Chicago, using miles. My goal is to book 2 round-trip business tickets (also traveling with a kid who isn't born yet, but will be this July).

Both my wife and I have credit scores around 750.

Spending is around $3,000 a month. Will have a few bigger expenses coming up with our first child this summer.

Cards I currently own are:

Chase Sapphire (my name)
Chase Freedom(my name)
Chase Freedom (wife)
British Airways Visa (wife)
American Express Starwoods (wife)

My mileage situation is as follows:

• American = 20,270
• Continental Airlines (OnePass) = 25,300
• British Airways = 2,513
• Starwood = 9,850
• Chase Ultimate Rewards = 53,000

Any help is greatly appreciated, as I'm not sure where to start.

I think your first step is to evaluate which carriers will get you there and how many miles it will take.

Air New Zealand is part of the Star Alliance. A round trip business class ticket booked with United miles would cost 135,000 miles each, or 110,000 US Airways miles.

I believe Quantas tickets are easiest to book with Alaska miles, because Alaska lets you book them when Quantas releases them 12 months out, and American won't let you book Quantas seats until 330 days out. However, Alaska miles are harder to accumulate. A round trip business class ticket would cost 110,000 Alaska miles or 125,000 American miles.

If 2013, GS USA to 2x110K by 10/12 to get *A on ANZ.:D

Dave...You'll have to explain to me what that means.

Thanks Birdseye for the tips on booking with Quantos. Now only if BA will come out with another 100,000 point bonus.:D

GS USA = Grand Slam US Airways
An annual ritual USAir puts on during Autumn.

Welcome to FT! I suggest you check out the "sticky" thread on credit card offers, in this MilesBuzz forum. That will acquaint you with all sorts of sign-up and initial spending bonuses, which would be great helps in you and your wife accumulating enough miles and/or points to get you to NZ.

Having said that, are you sure you want to go all the way to New Zealand with a baby? It's an absolutely wonderful country, but still...

You could hope and pray that Aeroplan will run another random, un-announced, 3 week long promo to get business class tickets for the mileage cost of economy like they did a few weeks ago! Business seats to New Zealand were only 80,000 miles! There was a 30% AMEX transfer bonus running too, so you could have gone for 62,000 Amex points each.

For the Alaskan theory - it would take a year of churning that card on 40,000 mile offers (not current, sorry) to get enough.

That was a wonderful promotion (I have a trip report to Sydney and Auckland in business class thanks to that promotion that I'm in the progress of writing up here [in the trip reports forum] and my blog). My only regret is not having even more MR points to transfer over before it ended :(

Grand Slam 2012 (if it happens, per tradition) would be a good bet (coupled with buying some extra miles if need-be from US). There's also a 40k US credit card offer out there (that I think is still valid).

If Amex adds Alaska or US as a transfer partner, the various large MR signup bonuses would probably be worth pursuing (although they've been targeted as of late and the "bump the bonus" nonsense has been clamped down on). Aeroplan is also an option (as an existing MR transfer partner), but I guess my immediate concern might be that they'd toss on fuel surcharges onto Air New Zealand before you can get the points to do a booking with them.

I was going to say the same thing... its a nice country and all, but its not as easy or cheap as I thought it would be before I got here.

I also hope BA comes out with that 100K offer since I missed it last time.

Just booked 2 separate round trips for 4 different pax to Aus/NZ.

Trip #1 was Dec - Jan for my son and his dad.
Impossible to get ANYTHING out on One World carriers. Had to book one-way on United miles routing SFO through YVR with a 9 hour layover (in economy for both of them - ouch !)
They are returning on Qantas with United miles.

Trip #2 Feb - March for us
No premium cabin awards to be found. Had to take ANZ economy (eeeek) from LAX (United miles). Returning on Qantas biz with AA miles.

So... It doesn't hurt to have miles in both *A and OW

We (wife, myself and 14 y.o.) are going to Australia/New Zealand the end of March. Similarly, we had to split it up using *A and OW. We generally suck it up and go in coach (helps that none of us is very tall!) in order to do more trips. But we did look for J tickets for this and it was slim pickings for more than 1 seat, even with some general flexibility in our dates.

OP: Gary Leff does an excellent job of addressing this very issue in this blog post, I think this will give you some food for thought.
http://boardingarea.com/blogs/viewfr...-to-book-them/

You have some diversity in miles to start with so that's good. The more creative and flexible you can be in dates and routes, the better. If you're absolutely set on flying in J or not at all, you're in for more of a challenge though it's not impossible. Consider if you'd do one way in Y and one in J if need be.

Aye, but did you take the ferry over to Colonia from BA? BTW, you planning for 2 or 3 to New Zealand? A cruise may be a bit easier with Flyertalker, Jr..

I went to NZ last summer (from Houston, TX). For only 65000 r/t CO miles I went to Hong Kong and made a stop over in NZ on the way back. Continental did not charge anything extra for NZ.

Also, I believe you only need 65000 ANA points for US/NZ r/t.

It is QANTAS.

BA would cost a whole lot of Avios and a whole lot of CASH on the fuel surcharge.

Are you aware of the massive devaluation of BA program effective Nov 16? Now it is a distance-based and segment-based program.

NZ is a very long way - some 15 hours flight from LAX.

Also, being in NZ and Australia several times (once every 2 years in the past decade until we decided to skip it in 2011 due to the very expensive exchange ratio of NZ Dollar against US Dollar), it is not an easy nor a reasonably priced country to travel, especially with a baby - for to truly enjoy a trip to NZ, one must rent a car and get out of AKL which is nothing but just another city - the beauty of NZ lies with its beautiful countryside. Rental car in NZ is EXPENSIVE and insurance is almost a necessity, among other things.