Quality of Trans Tasman service

[pauly7]

Pacific Blue:

ex-BNE had pretty good check-in staff and pretty good staff onboard, but this was before reconfig so old product, however suitable for the flight and a good recognition of status.

ex-ZQN great staff on the ground, upgrades at checkin, onboard staff same as above.

ex-CHC awful staff on the ground, onboard staff same as above.

Haven’t flown them since last year though, and will be flying QF this year as I’ll have DSC.

QF Jetconnect c*aps all over DJ's Pac Bro services. So much better.

Am booked on Air NZ next week looking fwd to seeing if they've improved since last time I flew them!

 

[eelynnad]

Flying AKL-SYD-AKL every week, on the whole, my experience is NZ is a better product than DJ, with some caveats.

• On DJ I tend to get allocated row 3 which has better seat pitch than std NZ economy. Good seat pitch wins out every time for me.
• With DJ Gold, getting allocated a Space+ seat is rare except when NZ flies the 777 on the odd occasion. They tend to dish out Seat+ to Airpoints member first (which is fair enough). So with DJ-gold, you only tend to get allocated std economy because there are a plethora of NZ-Gold and Gold Elite to contend with.
• The DJ seats are pretty hard compared to NZ.
• On rare occasions when NZ fly the 777 or 747 trans-tasman, this service trumps all. Especially when you have gold status as you get assigned a premium economy seating product.
• IFE, NZ is a clear winner.
• Catering - bought or otherwise, IMHO, NZ is better.
• AKL check-in: NZ has better premium check-in. NZ has kiosks and a fast-track elevator to dedicated immigration area. You can get from kerbside to airside in 7 mins no problems.
• Syd check-in: No difference.
• NZ has real business class.
• Lounge - DJ uses NZ lounges.
• Some news about VA trans-tasman upgrade. Google "
  Virgin Oz spruces up for NZ push​
  ".
• If you need to get from AKL to SYD by start of business, NZ is a better option as it has the earliest flight. The earliest flight is 07:00 on NZ101. DJ's earliest is 08:00, which gets you into SYD around 10:00am which is too late for start of business.
• After work, SYD to AKL flight options are: NZ108 dep 18:40 or DJ54 dep 19:50. Again preference is 18:40 timetable-wise which gets you back to AKL just before midnight.
• Flight crew. Both are pretty courteous. Subjectively, IMHO, NZ tend to be a bit more polished.
• On-time performance. Same. From my experience, the biggest factor affecting this is the head/tail winds. Flight times vary from 2:20 to 3:40 but on average 3:00hr. SYD-AKL tends to be quicker than AKL-SYD by about 25mins due to prevailing winds.

 

[Fruitcake]

• If you need to get from AKL to SYD by start of business, NZ is a better option as it has the earliest flight. The earliest flight is 07:00 on NZ101. DJ's earliest is 08:00, which gets you into SYD around 10:00am which is too late for start of business.
• After work, SYD to AKL flight options are: NZ108 dep 18:40 or DJ54 dep 19:50. Again preference is 18:40 timetable-wise which gets you back to AKL just before midnight.

I agree with pretty much all your points, but just thought I'd point out that this is by design - when the DJ/NZ alliance was announced, schedules were adjusted to be more complementary than competitive, ie for carrier-agnostic customers they should face a better choice of flights throughout the day, rather than DJ and NZ both offering 6:30pm flights out of Australia. Like yourself, however, I tend to find that when I'm doing trans-tasman the NZ flight (thankfully) is at a better time.

 

[samh004]

QF Jetconnect c*aps all over DJ's Pac Bro services. So much better.

I’ll agree they’re not too bad with what they can offer over the old or new Virgin services, but things do vary. I’ve been given a NZ$50 voucher as there was no lounge access in ZQN once, was very good at the cafe, but have also flown back in J on old product when I was under the impression the JetConnect fleet was all the new product (my aircraft I later spotted at the domestic terminal, so it had been subbed in for another and I’d lucked out).

 

[cavemanzk]

I’ll agree they’re not too bad with what they can offer over the old or new Virgin services, but things do vary. I’ve been given a NZ$50 voucher as there was no lounge access in ZQN once, was very good at the cafe, but have also flown back in J on old product when I was under the impression the JetConnect fleet was all the new product (my aircraft I later spotted at the domestic terminal, so it had been subbed in for another and I’d lucked out).

SYD-ZQN-SYD is not operated by Jet Connect, it is Qantas mainline