Ticket pricing weirdness

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danfaulknor

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#315879 27-Aug-2024 15:28

Had a weird one with AirNZ last week. We had to change flights (part way through the trip), so I had to do this with customer support. $900 later, flights were updated.

I jumped onto their website, and tried to book the same tickets, and it was significantly cheaper. $1980 all up with the change, or $1400 if I booked new tickets.

So naturally I got a refund on the changed flights, and booked new tickets, saving myself almost $600.

My question is, what went on here? Why were the flights so much more expensive as a change rather than a new booking? All tickets were FlexiRefund.

The AirNZ CSR could not give me a useful answer...

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KiwiSurfer

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#3275916 27-Aug-2024 22:49

Did you happen to catch the fare class for the changed booking and new booking -- it's a single letter in brackets after the name of the fare product e.g. seat (L). You should have got an eticket by email confirming the change which should have this. Your new eticket will have this as well. Economy is split into a number of classes each with its own price points. It may be your changed itinerary was booked into a different class than the new booking for some reason. Some airlines will only book changes into the same or higher class, and won't book into a lower class so that may have been what happened.

And are you sure the $900 is not just a standard change fee and/or a phone booking fee per person? This may be shown on your eticket receipt as well.

Part way through the trip may also be another issue. Could simply be different fares a return compared to a one-way -- by the sounds of it you booked a return then cancelled the return component and booked a one-way to get back to your original port?

nova

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#3275919 28-Aug-2024 07:08

Was this domestic or international? How many passengers? I have observed the the fare difference calculation for flexichange / flexirefund works differently than I would have expected in the case that AirNZ does an across the board fare increase. I had a domestic fare which originally cost $180, and initially shifting to another flight didn't cost any more as long as it was $180 or less. Then AirNZ put their fares up. And after that, shifting to another flight cost $29 even if the new fare was only $160. Presumably this was because some of the components of the fare had increased in price. I don't know this for sure, and if I had more time I would complain to AirNZ, because I definitely don't think that shifting to a cheaper fare should require me to pay a fare difference. I think this effect should be small, so it may not explain your situation, unless you had a lot of passengers.

danfaulknor

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#3276154 28-Aug-2024 13:30

Two passengers, same booking class (B) all FlexiRefund.

Flight change invoice (Initial booking class was G, new was B)

The tickets I booked by hand about 10 minutes after the flight change above (Class B):

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