Question for you dajop: We are flying VYR to either LGA or JFK and AC go via a Canadian stopover, either Toronto or Montreal. I could easily just purchase the YVR to either of these cities and then book the next leg to NYC separately.
Would I then do an AC search of AKL-YVR- (one of these two cities in Canada) so as to meet the intra region fare you are talking about? Is that likely to bring the cost down in terms of points needed? Or is that too simplistic and I have misunderstood what your are saying?
Thanks so far for the help
So to answer your question ......
Firstly, the upside to doing star alliance redemptions using NZ Airpoints Dollars, there are no complicated rules you can do what you want, as long as there is availability. You can combine business with economy, you can do stopovers or not do stopovers, etc etc .... the reason is that each sector is priced separately according the airpoints partner table. You could fly NZ to YVR, then Air Canada or United on to your next port on a date of your choosing (or even continue on Lufthansa to Germany, or ANA to Japan if that's what you wanted).
But, and it's a big but, there are no tricks to save points. Each time you add a flight you add extra Airpoints Dollars to the amount required. Essentially a redemption will cost you the sum of all the one way flights. Making it quite expensive. And then add a $100 service/booking fee on top for each itinerary (this is for the whole itinerary not each flight). To work the cost, you go to the star alliance award table, and look at where the flight is .... so Auckland to Vancouver is in the zone "New Zealand to North America" whilst a flight from Vancouver to Toronto will be in the "Intra Zone - International, more than 2000km) etc. Bottom line is that these can start adding up very quickly.
A better option for you, if looking at Amex is looking at availability using Krisflyer (which you can also transfer to). Although I've just checked availablity using ANA's booking tool and there's really only a handful of available dates for this. Otherwise you'd need to try flying via SYD, LAX or SFO, probably using Krisflyer miles.
They do have "reward fare buckets" available to member of partner airline programs (but not their own), but the term "Scarce as hen's teeth" comes to mind.
Not strictly true, as I mentioned, they do make "reward fare buckets" available (in theory) to own members when part an award booking that includes flights from other star alliance members. But I think the term "scarce as hens teeth" is equally applicable though!
