Air NZ Status Point earn?

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Peppery

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Topic # 240271 30-Aug-2018 09:14

Hi team,

I have 3 Airpoints credit cards now and have the luxury of pushing a lot of business expenditure through these cards. The result being that I have quite a few thousand APDs and haven't paid for a flight in quite some time. The downside of this has been that of course, all of my status points have come from my cards and I'm stuck at silver because of this.

I'm currently at 533 status points. So I would need a flat 225 for silver and 450 SP to hit gold. My Koru membership has run out (but I have passes to burn, the struggle is real) hence me wanting to hit gold.

The bulk of my purchases has actually been in recent months, so I have time up my sleeve before my current lot expire.

Is it worth paying for flights to accrue status points? If so, where would I find routes with the best NZD/status point earn rate?

Any thoughts appreciated :)

PeterReader

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Reply # 2081202 30-Aug-2018 09:14

Allow me to introduce you folks to our new travel community: TravelTalk NZ.

We hope to see you there!

I am the Geekzone Robot and I am here to help. I am from the Internet. I do not interact. Do not expect other replies from me.

sbiddle

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Reply # 2081211 30-Aug-2018 09:29

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Well you need to buy flights with $ to earn SP which is why most people who fly regularly never use APD to purchase flights. You need at least 50% of your SP from flying to earn status.

Your question about routes can't really be answered because there are so many variables. It depends how many SP you want to earn and whether you want this on one flight or multiple. Discounted business class fares to Australia are one of the best in terms of value for money if you're Auckland based. If you're Wellington based there are combinations of domestic flights that are good - but if you're not based in Wellington the earn rate won't be so good because you'd need to fly to WLG first to be able to benefit from them.

Peppery

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Reply # 2081224 30-Aug-2018 09:42

sbiddle:

Well you need to buy flights with $ to earn SP which is why most people who fly regularly never use APD to purchase flights. You need at least 50% of your SP from flying to earn status.

Yep I get that. I'm wanting to change that :)

Your question about routes can't really be answered because there are so many variables. It depends how many SP you want to earn and whether you want this on one flight or multiple. Discounted business class fares to Australia are one of the best in terms of value for money if you're Auckland based. If you're Wellington based there are combinations of domestic flights that are good - but if you're not based in Wellington the earn rate won't be so good because you'd need to fly to WLG first to be able to benefit from them.

Auckland based, and I'm not bothered by multiple flights. I'm mostly interested in getting maximum status for my spend here.

sbiddle

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Reply # 2081309 30-Aug-2018 12:12

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Well it really depends how many SP you are after. Most people wouldn't be in the position of needing to chase several hundred points because that's a huge significant investment for status runs.

Realistically you're looking at around $2500 worth of flights for 225 SP for silver which you could do for under $2000 if you picked the right combinations of flights. Getting 450SP would cost a minimum of around $3500 using the best possible combination of SP earn exploits, and realistically is closer to $5k of flying. As a benchmark you won't get 1 SP for much less than around NZ$7.30

Since you obviously fly so infrequently you'd have to be pretty crazy to spend that sort of money for such minimal benefit of having status. I fail to see how spending $5000 just to get Gold would stack up in anybody's books when you can buy Koru for 1/10th of that.

Nate001

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Reply # 2081317 30-Aug-2018 12:21

If you're chasing the status purely for the status, you're wasting your time and money. As Steve said, just get Koru. Why do you need Gold?

darylblake

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Reply # 2081318 30-Aug-2018 12:22

You need to take quite a lot of flights. Personally I don't bother with the status points because I don't fly enough.

If you do a few long haul trips a year (Europe or US) + a few Aussie trips then earning enough S/P will be very easy. I personally don't bother with the points program because I never earn enough points to go up a status. You are going to have to fly a LOT if you do domestics because you get hardly any SP. People that fly around NZ / AU maybe once a week wont find it hard to get enough points.

It might be worthwhile just paying for a Koru membership if thats what you want. Personally I don't mind not having one because I don't fly enough. I don't collect airpoints on my CC either.

sbiddle

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Reply # 2081322 30-Aug-2018 12:26

Spending money to chase status simply doesn't stack up. Based on the best case of $7.30 per SP and an average of probably somewhere around $15 - $20 per SP across most domestic and short haul flights it does require a lot of flying to get status. Nobody who flys regularly uses APD for buying tickets because you then get no SP.

It also means I spent an awful lot with Air NZ last year to get the 2,000 or SP I got but then again I did fly on 80 plane flights last year.

Linuxluver

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Reply # 2081760 31-Aug-2018 07:38

I'm currently Air NZ Gold Elite. This is my second year.

If all you want is Koru, then just use your APD to buy a 2 year Koru membership. This gets you access to lounges in NZ and major cities in Australia and priority boarding on Air NZ.

Gold is only really relevant for Star Alliance airline lounges and priority stuff outside NZ and AU.

In my own case, Elite meant a lot of flying trans-Tasman and at the higher fares (Flexi) and at peak times. It just worked it that way. I was working 4 days a week in OZ for several months. But to anchor it, you need at least one long-haul business class fare to a place far away place Air NZ fly to direct. So really, you're talking about London. It's crazy money. I wouldn't do it just for points unless I had so much money I didn't care.

But just for Koru.....pay with Airpoints dollars and use your real money for flights.

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Kyanar

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Reply # 2092223 17-Sep-2018 23:15

sbiddle:

Well it really depends how many SP you are after. Most people wouldn't be in the position of needing to chase several hundred points because that's a huge significant investment for status runs.

Realistically you're looking at around $2500 worth of flights for 225 SP for silver which you could do for under $2000 if you picked the right combinations of flights. Getting 450SP would cost a minimum of around $3500 using the best possible combination of SP earn exploits, and realistically is closer to $5k of flying. As a benchmark you won't get 1 SP for much less than around NZ$7.30

Since you obviously fly so infrequently you'd have to be pretty crazy to spend that sort of money for such minimal benefit of having status. I fail to see how spending $5000 just to get Gold would stack up in anybody's books when you can buy Koru for 1/10th of that.

If you genuinely enjoy flying (or feel like visiting the USA in general), there is discounted business class (J) fares from Australia's east coast to the US going for $5-6k earning 750SP, which is fairly good, as usually that's only 297SP each direction.

New Zealanders really get screwed by AirNZ on earn and pricing, through-fares from Australia are almost always cheaper due to increased competition.

sbiddle

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Reply # 2092247 18-Sep-2018 07:26

I wrote about booking flights from Australia and how you can (essentially) get free trips to Australia doing it.

https://traveltalk.nz/reviews-tips/travel-tips/want-to-save-money-on-air-new-zealand-flights-to-the-us-try-booking-from-australia/

paulspain

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Reply # 2092251 18-Sep-2018 07:45

If you grab a Westpac credit card that earns Hotpoints, you can book normal tickets as rewards and therefore you accrue Status Points on those flights.

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