More on Air New Zealand Airpoints

I suppose this will be the second post in a series on air travel and frequent flyer (FF) programs. This is an old school "lots of text and no pictures" kind of post. So TLDR - Join Airpoints if you live in New Zealand and have flights on Air NZ coming up. If not, then don't bother.

There are two main reasons why people participate in airline FF programs:

1) For free or discounted flights (or upgrades)
2) To achieve a level of status within the program that confers benefits like lounge access and priority boarding

The Airpoints program is actually quite poor on both these counts. That is not to say that it is not worth joining, it is just harder to obtain benefits than it is in some other FF programs. If you don't live in New Zealand, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to join Airpoints and credit to Air NZ. If you do live in New Zealand and do most of your flying domestically, then Airpoints or Qantas' FF program are your two best bets. If you live in New Zealand and do a reasonable amount of international flying, then you might be better off looking elsewhere. Singapore Airlines' Krisflyer is pretty good for earning miles and redeeming for flights. Asiana Airlines' Asiana Club is probably best for achieving elite status cheaply.

Why is Airpoints not very good?
First of all, Airpoints is a revenue-based system, which means the amount of points you earn is roughly based off of the amount you spend, rather than the amount of miles you fly. While there are some inconsistencies that can be exploited, it isn't really possible to game the system in a major way. In the Airpoints program, you earn "airpoints dollars" instead of miles. These airpoints dollars are worth exactly the same amount as New Zealand dollars. You can use these to buy any flight you can buy with real money. So Air NZ pumps up the fact that airpoints can be used to buy any flight, not like other programs where award fares are limited. However, because you use them just like regular currency, you don't actually get any special benefit from having airpoints dollars. That super cheap Trans-Tasman fare? You could get it for 179 airpoints dollars, or you could get it for 179 regular dollars. At the other end of the scale, the super expensive fares are still super expensive. With a mileage-based program, it usually costs the same amount of miles for the same route regardless of when you are flying. Take Singapore Airlines as an example, a one-way flight from Chch to Singapore costs 21,500 Krisflyer miles + 200 SG dollars, even during the school holidays (when flights cost a lot more). Yeah, availability can be limited, but I'd rather at least have a shot at using the frequent flyer program to get cheap flights. With airpoints dollars, your best bet is to spend them on Grabaseat or other cheap domestic and Trans-Tasman flights that don't earn fuck all anyway. The only benefit to using airpoints dollars is that you save on the credit card fee when booking flights.

Airpoints is a little bit better when it comes to earning status, and it is Star Alliance status (which is nice). But, as mentioned above, there are better programs for this. You earn "status credits" for flying and once you have obtained a certain amount of these, then you get some status. This is fairly standard. You can read more about it here.

So what type of traveler benefits from Air NZ Airpoints?
Someone who flies a lot on the super cheap Air NZ domestic and Trans-Tasman fares that aren't able to be credited anywhere else. Actually, it's not even the super cheap fares that can only be credited to Air NZ. Unless you want to pay $400 for a full fare Y-class Chch to Auckland flight, then basically no domestic flights can be credited to other Star Alliance programs (I haven't looked too closely at crediting to Virgin Australia, because I think Virgin Australia is a horrible airline).

So you have joined Airpoints. What now?
Not much you can do with the crap earning and burning rate. But here are some tips to achieve Air NZ status (relatively) cheaply:

1) Buy Grabaseat and domestic sales flights - All domestic flights earn a minimum of 8 status points. You can regularly get a $39 flight from Chch to Wellington, or a $45 flight from Chch to Auckland. These flights usually earn 0 Airpoints dollars, which is not great if you don't care about earning status, but $5 for each status point is actually pretty good.

2) Fly US domestic first class and business class flights on United Airlines - First class on US domestic flights is not actually that much of an upgrade over economy. It's basically just a slightly bigger seat, a beverage and some crappy snacks. On short flights, it's not massively more expensive than economy, certainly not 4x, 5x, 6x you get on long-haul first class. You still get the 4x, 5x, 6x status points earning on these flights though. To put things in perspective, I paid about the same amount for an economy fare from New York to LA as I did for a first class fare from Orange County to Seattle (via San Francisco). The NY flight earned 25 status points, the OC flights earned 130 status points. I probably should have credited the NY flight to Singapore Airlines Krisflyer (which earns 100% mileage on even discount economy United fares).

3) Live in a city that is not Auckland - If you are flying long-haul out of Auckland, but your starting point is somewhere else in NZ, that domestic flight from Chch or Welly to Auckland usually doesn't cost you any extra, but it does give you extra status points each way.

4) Get a platinum Airpoints credit card - Having a status point-earning credit card really helps quite a bit. The Kiwibank card has the best earning rate, with 1 status point for every $200 spent. I would recommend getting this one, because you also get the ability to buy any amount of Airpoints dollars for a $5 fee. Also, there is the whole supporting a New Zealand bank which doesn't take profits off-shore kind of thing as well. By the way, I don't got no links for you to click on so you can sign up*. You can click here to go to the Air NZ page that does a card comparison.
*I despise how some travel sites hawk credit cards to get commissions (but I would probably do it too).

I will write some more on this later. In my next post, I will go over the things I like about Airpoints. Air New Zealand is a pretty decent airline, it just has a crappy frequent flyer program. But with some airlines around the world (most notably big US carriers Delta and United) moving to revenue-based systems as well, the Airpoints program may not look so bad in a few years (unless it gets watered-down too).

My year getting to Air New Zealand Elite

I wrote most of this in September last year, once I got back from the US. Just pretend you are reading it seven months ago (or however far in the past September 2015 is from the date you are reading this).

I have been fortunate enough to have done quite a bit of travelling over the years, but up until quite recently, I never bothered with airline frequent flyer programs. I don't know why. Maybe I was just young and dumb, I guess? But that changed at the end of 2014, when Air New Zealand had a spate of pretty decent deals on long-haul flights to places I wanted to go to. So I snapped those deals up. Plus, I was talked into purchasing a Koru membership, which incentivized me to fly almost exclusively with Air NZ. I was also fortunate enough to get an expensive last minute return flight to the US paid for by my employer. All this convinced me to try and go for Elite (the top tier in Air NZ's Airpoints frequent flyer program).

I managed to get there in the end. Below are some statistics for my qualification period (September 3rd 2014 to September 2nd 2015). I only listed flights that counted towards my Air New Zealand Airpoints status qualification.

Total flights flown:
63

Distance flown:
Just over 78,000 miles

International flights:
Christchurch to Singapore (via Auckland) return
Christchurch to San Francisco (via Auckland) return
Christchurch to Beijing (via Auckland and Hong Kong) return (Air NZ and Air China)
Christchurch to Los Angeles (via Auckland) return
Christchurch to Brisbane return
Brisbane to Christchurch one way
Vienna to Valencia (via Zurich) one way (Swiss Airlines)

NZ domestic flights:
Christchurch to Wellington return x8
Christchurch to Auckland return x4
Christchurch to Invercargill return
Christchurch to Hokitika return
Christchurch to Nelson return

Non-NZ domestic:
Beijing to Dalian one way (Air China)
United flights x9 (distance-wise about the equivalent of flying across the US 3 times)

Total status points from flights:
1399 (the rest came from credit card spend)

Total cost of plane tickets:
About $11,600 NZD

I imagine most people who achieve Elite status do so by flying in premium cabins and racking up a lot of status points per flight...or maybe flying heaps for work. Not me. Apart from two first class and two business class flights on United, I always bought the cheapest ticket I could. I had been hoping not to have to do any points running (miles running), but a closer read of the eligibility requirements for Elite revealed that I was about 40 points short of the amount that needed to be accrued on Air NZ flights. Which meant I needed to take 3 Christchurch to Wellington return flights. So all up, going for Elite cost me an extra $1000, one day of my holiday in the US (taking 4 flights to get from New York to Seattle), and three workday evenings (those Chch -Welly flights were not fun).

Was it worth it? I'd say so. So far, being Air New Zealand Elite has gotten me (or will get me):

- an extra year of Star Gold status/Koru, which is about $430 value (how much Koru costs with a platinum airpoints credit card)
- the ability to gift Koru equivalent to one person (another $430)
- a short haul upgrade that got my mum upgraded from premium economy to business on a trans-Tasman flight (about $600 value)
- a free upgrade to Economy Plus on a United flight from Sydney to Los Angeles (coupla hundred bucks?)
- moved to a Skycouch row on a flight from Perth to Auckland (maybe $1000 value over the top of my ticket)
- status matched to Alitalia Freccia Alata Plus, which gives me Skyteam Elite Plus. This also gave me the ability to gift Freccia Alata (Skyteam Elite) to someone. This is of questionable value, because I am unlikely to fly Alitalia or any other Skyteam airline (but the membership card is cool)

There was also the thrill of trying to get to Elite as cheaply as possible. I am slightly bummed out now that status points are essentially useless to me for the next year. I am not going to fly enough to re-qualify as Elite and Air New Zealand has a soft landing (so it doesn't matter if I get 0 status points this year, I will have Gold status next year).

I guess I should try and save some cash and not blow all my disposable income on travel.

Ballpark experience number seven: The Bronx, NY

Like anyone who is a fan of an MLB team that is not the New York Yankees, I hated the Yankees. They are the evil empire of baseball, with more money and less class than any other organization. So I wasn't expecting to enjoy being in the den of the beast as much as I did. For me, the Yankee Stadium experience was really good, and it made me re-evaluate my opinion of the franchise.

I had not bought a ticket prior to turning up to the stadium, so with some trepidation, I joined the queue at the ticket stand. I was slightly star-struck when I found I was standing three people behind current world chess champion Magnus Carlsen. I don't think anyone else recognized him. Another guy in the queue was directing some friendly banter towards Magnus' friend, who was wearing an Oakland A's t-shirt. The queue was sizeable but went pretty fast. When I turned up at the counter to buy my ticket, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the ticket was half-price if I paid by Mastercard. So I did and saved $26.

I took my savings and went to look for some food. I took advantage of another Mastercard special to buy a combo that contained two Premio hotdogs and a diet soda. The hotdogs were the best stadium food that I came across on my tour. They were spicy and tasted like they contained a good proportion of real meat. I would say they were good by any standard.

Due to the size of the stadium, there wasn't much free standing area close to the action. This was about as close as I could get:

I stood and enjoyed my hotdogs in the shade, before heading up to my seat.

Yeah, it was a little far away from the field, but the viewing was unobstructed. The surrounding fans were pleasant, and contributed to a good vibe. It seemed like folks were interested and really got into cheering for the home team, without being abusive douchebags. I was also impressed by the general baseball knowledge on display. 

As for the baseball action, the Yankees won on the back of two home-runs from rookie 1st baseman Greg Bird, who was filling in for the oft-injured Mark Teixeira. The Yankees get deserved criticism for spending hideous amounts of money to lure veteran free-agents away from other teams*, but the bulk of their success over the years has come from developing their own talent. Maybe Greg Bird will be the next great Yankee star, and I will be able to say that I was at his first multi home-run game. Hopefully not though. They are still the evil empire and I will happily root against them (except when they are playing Boston). Actually, there are quite a few teams that I dislike more. Lets say they have gone from very hateable to moderately dislikeable in my books.

The Yankee Stadium experience was really cool, and I would recommend it to anyone. The food was good, the fans were great and the stadium is fancy. In a non-biased ranking, it may have come in first place. However, I am very biased toward my favourite team's home stadium, so my afternoon in the Bronx comes in at 2nd place.

* Yes, I realize the Mariners signed away Robinson Cano from the Yankees.

Ballpark experience number six: Philadelphia

I'll be straight up...this was the least amount of fun I had at a baseball stadium on my trip. My rankings are just a rank of how much I enjoyed the whole experience of being at the stadium, not some detailed, objective scientific study. After all, what kind of expert am I? I am a New Zealander who has never played baseball, and had never even watched a game in person until 5 years ago. So in the highly unlikely event that any Phillies fans read this post and feel offended...it's not Citizen's Bank Park's fault...it's mine.

At this point in the trip, I was tired and starting to feel the effects of a diet consisting mostly of greasy junk food. Also, because I was travelling city to city by train, I hadn't gotten much sleep the previous three nights (two 6am starts and an overnight train from Boston to Baltimore). Plus, it was just so damn hot outdoors. A sensible person would probably not have been walking around outside as much as I did.

The point I knew I was in trouble was right after I ate this cheesesteak:

It was from Geno's, which is a famous cheesesteak place. I had been planning on getting another one from Pat's, which is another well-known place just across the road. However, I started to feel really overheated and lethargic and just damn greasy after finishing the sandwich. I forgot to get napkins and couldn't be bothered to go up to the counter and ask for some. So I just wiped the grease that was settling in on my face on my t-shirt. I think I can actually pinpoint that moment as the lowest point on my baseball tour, where I was just so lazy and slow that I couldn't even ask for a fucking napkin.

I should also point out that I had been walking around in the hot sun for about an hour trying to find the place. It seemed like it took twice as long for me to stagger back to the hotel and get into bed. At this point, I was seriously contemplating not going to watch the game. I just had no energy at all. But, an hour or so of rest in my air-conditioned room managed to revive me enough to order a ride on Uber to the stadium (Uber is awesome to use).

I got to the stadium and stayed for 4 innings. Here is an action shot to show that I did attend:

I think that was Jose Bautisita up hitting. I don't really remember, but let's say it was, and that he hit a 500 foot dinger (Edit: on closer inspection, the batter looks nothing like Jose Bautista). The 2015 Blue Jays were very good, so even if it wasn't Jose, chances are that it was another badass hitter like Edwin Encarnacion or Josh Donaldson. I mean there is only a 1 in 9 chance that it was Ryan Goins (Edit: it's not Goins, he bats lefty). He is terrible. The Phillies were/are terrible too, so I imagine Toronto won that game.

I didn't eat anything at the stadium. Nothing seems appealing when you are sweating grease. All the yummy junk food I was piling in at other stadiums suddenly seemed repulsive. I was craving fresh vegetables, but unsurprisingly, they were in short supply at the ballpark. I had to head out and find something more palatable.

Here is a picture of the roast beef wrap I got from some posh healthy food store after the game:

Here is a picture of the vegan buckwheat noodle meal I ate for breakfast the next day:

It was amazingly delicious.

I used to think that if I lived in the US, I would become really fat eating all the delicious junk food. It is good to know that my body has an in-built mechanism to avoid consuming too much crap.

So yeah, what to say... this stadium ranked 8th and last. It's not really a fair ranking, but the stadium didn't seem particularly interesting in any case. What I saw of Philadelphia itself didn't tickle my fancy either. So now that I have ticked off Citizen's Bank Park, I will probably never go back.

Ballpark experience number five: Baltimore

Wow, it's been some time since I wrote one of these. I suppose I'd better box on and try to get them finished, if only for some small sense of accomplishment. It would be nice to have a written account of this stuff before my memories fade.

The baseball stadium in Baltimore is called "Oriole Stadium at Camden Yards". I really liked this stadium. The main distinctive feature of the stadium is the brick warehouse on the right field side. I'd always assumed that it was right up against the right field bleachers, but as it turns out, there is a street in between.

You can walk off the street straight into the outfield bleacher seats. It is really quite cool. I also appreciate that Camden Yards is located in Baltimore, within walking distance of the CBD and harbour area. This is much better than stadiums that are located in the middle of fucking nowhere...like Angels stadium.

I hadn't bought a ticket on Stubhub before I arrived in the city. I figured there would be plenty of seats for a weeknight game against a non-contender. So here is my paper ticket I got from the stadium ticket line:

Here is the view of the stadium from just down the road. Walking straight ahead gets you to the same point as in the first photo (but facing in the opposite direction).

How was the food? Pretty good actually. Camden Yards has a concession stand called "Boog's Barbecue", which was founded by a former Oriole player. It serves barbecue that is passable by regular standards but terrific by ballpark food standards. I got some beef which came with a roll/biscuit and some crisps. I particularly liked the horseradish sauce you could dollop on.

What about the baseball? It was okay. The game was a low-key meaningless late August game. The Orioles probably weren't going to make the playoffs (and they didn't). The A's certainly weren't going to make the playoffs at that stage. The whole event felt like a relaxed casual nice thing to do on a Monday night, without there being any tension or pressure. The crowd was pretty good and the atmosphere was pleasant. It wasn't quite as laid back as Anaheim, but it wasn't quite as charged as Fenway. My seat wasn't the greatest, so I couldn't see much detail of what was going on:

I wasn't too concerned though. It was a lovely Summer's evening. I didn't even bother spending some time standing in the walkway area behind home plate to catch more of the action.

There was one cool baseball thing from the game. I got to see the only ambidextrous pitcher in the majors, Pat Venditte. He isn't particularly good (basically mediocre to bad with either arm), but it was freaking awesome to see him pitch. He has this custom-made glove that he can swap from hand to hand, depending on what arm he is throwing with.

Watching baseball at Camden Yards was a thoroughly decent and enjoyable experience. It was the 3rd best time I had watching baseball on my trip. The stadium is beautiful, the food was nice and the crowd was good. I would go back.