Air NZ Booking & Schedule change - downgraded and forced to pay more!

[wilkiaj]

To celebrate my wife's 60th birthday I purchased some Business Class tickets to the Fort Lauderdale and a cruise in the US. I am LT Gold and current Platinum Qantas Member. I decided to give Air NZ a go after several years of flying with them in NZ and the Pacific region and found them to be faultless until now. We have J class tickets all the way over and back. The other day they sent me an email saying to contact about a flight change, nothing out of the ordinary about this. No other comment was made until I had to prompt them about my connecting flight from Houston to Auckland. If I did not raise it we would have miss the connection. This is something the public should not have to do, it is the airlines responsibility to make sure any changes they make are in line with your connections.They then arranged for an earlier flight from Fort Lauderdale back to Houston. Great until I saw the ticket, it went from J class to Y class. I question this with Air NZ and they said there was nothing they could do other than offer me an option to drive to 4 hours to Tampa or stay another three days in Fort Lauderdale to remain in Business class. This was not an option. Going with Economy and as the sector is only three hours and this plane is cramped we decided to be seated in Economy Plus. First time ever I have had to pay $100US for a downgrade.

As we have a friend travelling with us in economy I asked for a complimentary guest pass to one of the Clubs for the inconvenience ,Air NZ said No. I guess customer service doesn't hold much value anymore.

Our friend that is travelling with us had to hear from me that the United sector was cancelled. They questioned her where she heard it from.

If I had flown One World I suppose this would never of happened.

Do I have any other options?? I still have a couple of months

 

[TomVexille]

Re: Air NZ Alliance not as strong as it should be

Assuming that you have not accepted the changes you would be within your rights to demand a full refund and take your business elsewhere. However that may come at an increased cost.

 

[wilkiaj]

Re: Air NZ Alliance not as strong as it should be

You are right I could get a full refund and they did offer that to their credit , but I suspect that they could then sell the seats at an increased price. It was a discounted Business Class Airfare . At the time I could have paid about $800 per seat more and flown Qantas.
Ahh live and learn.

 

[AviationNZ]

Re: Air NZ Alliance not as strong as it should be

I'm guessing that the J class cabin on the UA flight from Fort Lauderdale back to Houston was full? I would've assumed that since you were going from J to Y for that sector, the add-on cost would've decreased (albeit only marginally), but I could be wrong on how the fares are constructed.

To state it would've never happened with OneWorld is a bit of a stretch...plenty of cases on here where every airline and every alliance has caused inconvenience to travellers.

 

[serfty]

Re: Air NZ Alliance not as strong as it should be

I suspect you would have been better off posting the situation here BEFORE finalising things with AirNZ.

To Pay an additional $100 for a situation forced by them? That is wrong and certainly could have been avoided with better information/advice.