I live on the west coast (Seattle area) and New Zealand has been a bucket list trip for many years. We want to fly there next year for our 10 year wedding anniversary but I haven't had much luck finding business class fares that aren't exorbitant. I've consistently seen 300k one way, per person and that's just beyond our modest stockpile of points. Has anyone had success with NZ routes in business class that are a bit more reasonable?
just have to keep monitoring deals. when UA has saver space (which is fairly frequent if you have status/UA card), it should be 100k pp in J. close-in should be available with flexibility. AA frequently has deals too, saw about 75-85k earlier this year available one-way in J
I have seen Air New Zealand J on Lifemiles (last minutes)
We flew United Polaris in 2024 booked with lifemiles - great deal that hadn't been back since. As funkyflapjak mentioned I also see 100k United Polaris, United miles, close in. There is space on Fiji Airways from time to time, which requires a connection in NAN.
@jimmys-travel-report-2 Unfortunately, over the last year United has started offering essentially no business awards to partners like Avianca. Your best bet now is to book this kind of award directly with United as a card holder. Interesting related note, if you have trouble getting approved or do not want to use a 5-24 slot for a United Chase card, they now offer a debit card which gives the same discounted saver award pricing after $10,000 in spend per year. This would be easy to hit by throwing 10k at federal taxes with the low $2.50 fee for using a debit card.
If I recall, this blog has written about services that will monitor award redemption rates, though a quick search didn't turn anything up. Am I remembering that correctly?
You might also consider doing a split trip. For example, if you are willing to pay to fly to Hawaii on a separate ticket, an award on Hawaiian Airlines between HI and NZ is likely going to be a bit less than an award from LA to NZ (though probably not by that much). It would at least open up more options for you, though.
By the way, I totally endorse travel to NZ. It's one of my favorite countries, and everyone is so immensely friendly! 😄
@kswartz Yep. I would recommend seats.aero It is a fantastic tool and I've used it to catch award availability several times now.
This was by no means ideal, but I booked AF LAX-PPT in J using Flying Blue miles. We had a 23 hr layover in Tahiti, then continued on Air New Zealand J to AKL (booked that back when Amex travel would give 35% points back on all J/F travel).
If you get desperate maybe you can find something similar, booking the “short” hop from Tahiti or Fiji separate. That 23h layover was brutal. 4:00am departure lol.
@gp_7676 I was going to suggest the same, but via HNL. HA and NZ operate the service. Getting to Hawaii from Seattle is the easy part.
We went in March. We found AA DFW-AKL for 83k pp on the new 787-9P (grabbed the first row suites as well). Could not find anything for the way back but was lucky enough to see AKL-LAX on Delta One for $2400pp so I bought those tix, helping us with DL status renewal as well.
Look at a map. Notice that SYD, MEL, ADL, BNE, NAN are all within ~3hr flight time of AKL. There's lots of cheap flights MEL/SYD to AKL. Maybe it's worth spending a night in SYD and a few hundred bucks on a cheap 3hr econo hopper in order to not have to spend 15hr in Y to get across the pacific in the first place?
Think out of the box. Can you assemble your way to something the wrong way around? I got to NZ last year by booking a BA hop to London via CX to get to a CX LHR-HKG-AKL flight. It meant spending a couple days in London, but we have friends there ad my wife hadn't been there for a while, so well. (As it happens, the JFK-LHR hop got cancelled, so we got J-class UK261 payout to boot. 🙂 )
I just booked SFO-ADL for 90k. say $350 for a Y flight to CHC, and $120 for a hotel...
YMMV on this of course. This kind of itinerary means either taking chances on connections or spending a day or two in the transit city to get some buffer, and of course some additional expense to fill in the blanks. Not everyone can afford the time or the additional expenses. On the flip side, it adds to the adventure of it all.