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).