Leave it to the always clever folks at Air New Zealand to come up with an April Fools’ Day joke that had me pause for just a moment. It is April 1st already down there, after all, and they “introduced” new StraightUp Fares as follows:

When you click on the button to book one of these new fares, you’re let in on the joke and asked to rank how funny you thought it was. Sadly, they don’t reveal the results from others, so I wonder just how many people selected the “I found this joke was bloody deplorable mate, bloody deplorable..” category.

What do you think? Funny? Not funny?

(Hat tip: Johnny Jet)

I may have spoken too soon regarding my smooth sailing with the United Airlines system changeover. Earlier this week, I tried to redeem an e-cert (customer appreciation certificate) online for a new booking and received an error message that the cert couldn’t be found.

I called United and the agent asked me to build a new reservation online without entering the certificate number and on the payment page, select “phone order page.”

Doing so generated a record locator without me having to make a payment and the agent then documented the record, extended the ticketing time limit and asked me to use the united.com/feedback forum to get in touch with customer service so they could research the issue with my cert.

I figured it would take a couple of days for a response and after not hearing anything now on the third day, I decided to call back to see what could be done. This new agent couldn’t find the original reservation – nor was it in my online profile – so I had to start from scratch again, but fortunately I was connected with a “better” agent. The same fare was also still available, fortunately.

After being transferred to web support (thankfully) and spending an hour on hold, this new agent returned to advise that my new reservation was built, it was documented for the ticketing department to deduct $200 from the fare as her research found that my e-cert wasn’t previously used, and she sent me an email with the itinerary. It seemed to be okay.

Then I went online to take a peek and saw a $25 call center fee that wasn’t reflected in the email confirmation.

I called back to contest it as I’m exempt from that fee as a top-tier 1K and this new agent read through all of the documentation and did see a note that it should be waived when the reservation is ticketed, along with confirming the $200 e-cert credit. We’ll see what happens and I’ll definitely make a new post if it doesn’t go as planned.

Now… here’s what I think happened. After the system changeover on March 3, I went in and began to make a new reservation to see if the e-cert would be recognized and it did indeed work and deducted $200 from the quoted fare. I never completed the booking as I was simply testing the process, but I think it deactivated the cert number because it was “used” during a flight booking process. This is total speculation, of course, and I’m too afraid to try another cert in case I encounter the same problem when I’m actually ready to redeem another one.

So… while everything had been smooth sailing for me since the system conversion, this is now my first encountered glitch with the new United. I’m hoping it’s the last.

Last week I posted a pre-deregulation seat map of an American Airlines Boeing 727-100 and I thought it would be interesting to compare it against a version flying the skies eight years later for this installment of Vintage Airline Seat Maps.

American pulled out one row of First Class, removed the coat compartment and bar from coach and likely tightened the seat pitch to offer 115 seats in this version versus the 100-seater I posted last week. First Class lost only four seats and economy gained 19 in the reconfiguration.

You’d find me sitting in 5A or 5F in First Class or in the first few rows of coach forward of the mid-cabin galley.

Where would you sit?

As reported late last year, EVA Airways has been looking to join an alliance and it appears they’ll eventually become a full-fledged member of Star Alliance in 2013.

Speaking with the Australian Business Traveller today, a spokesperson said:

A formal announcement between the airline and Star is expected this Thursday in Taipei, the carrier’s home base.

Curious to know the airline’s gateways from North America, I looked ‘em up and see they have daily (or better) service from Los Angeles and San Francisco to Taipei, operate four times weekly from JFK and Seattle, and three times weekly from Toronto and Vancouver.

It will be great to have another airline partner to redeem my MileagePlus miles with when traveling internationally. Now I just need to read up on some trip reports to see how they compare to the likes of Asiana and Cathay Pacific.

I’m certain I’m not the only one noticing issues with how United Airlines flights have been posting to MileagePlus lately. Initially, I was going to remain silent as the errors have been – until now – to my benefit, such as upgraded flights reflecting 150% EQM as if they were paid premium cabins. Now, however, things are getting really whacky.

This past week I flew on a full-fare coach ‘B’ ticket and the flight ended up posting with negative PQMs and I didn’t receive the 125% bonus redeemable miles.

I spent a bit of time over on the Flyertalk boards today reading about similar issues and it sounds like MileagePlus will be doing a sweep soon to correct the errors. According to this post, a representative admits to the problems and points to the upcoming sweep:

As I’ve been doing for years, I maintain a spreadsheet with all of my flight activity to occasionally cross-check against what the website reflects. While not as tech-savvy as the many applications out there that do it for you automatically, I think it might be beneficial for everyone to carefully monitor their United balances in the coming days and weeks in a similar fashion to help identify any posting errors.

How have you fared?

It’s no secret that I horde amenity kits and a fellow blogger that knows my unique passion for them reached out to me a couple of days ago looking to spread the word that he’s giving away an extra Air New Zealand Business Premier kit he received recently.

I already have one in my collection, so if you don’t and would like a chance to win this one (actually a new, still sealed version), visit his Miles To Go blog and follow the directions below to enter and win it.

[Note: To enter, be sure to go to the linked blog above to leave your comment... not my comment section here on Frequently Flying. Then send your email per the third bullet point below.]

Entries close at midnight this coming Monday March 26^th. Remember… this is not my giveaway, so be sure to leave a comment on his post for your chance to win.

One of my good friends sent me a link to a gut-busting version of the “Hitler’s Rage” video showing how “Hitler” reacts to the 2012 United Airlines MileagePlus program changes. If you understand German it might not be that funny, but the captions are brilliantly written and perfectly timed for a highly entertaining four minutes. My apologies in advance for the damn ad you have to watch first… it’s worth the wait, though.

P.S. I’ve been working on (and traveling for) a new and exciting project this week, so my apologies for the lighter and briefer posts. Will introduce you to my new endeavor very soon.

I’m sticking with a narrowbody again for this week’s Vintage Airline Seat Map and bring you the American Airlines Boeing 727-100 from 1977 appearing below. Seating a total of 100 passengers, this pre-deregulation configuration offered 14 first class seats and room for 86 in coach, which probably had nearly equivalent seat pitch as that found in first class.

A couple of interesting things to note are the carryon luggage racks, a coat compartment in coach and the bar across from the mid-cabin galley. Smoking was likely allowed plane-wide, so without that information, you’d find me in 3A in first class and 5A in coach if there was more legroom at that bulkhead, otherwise 6A.

Where would you sit?

In follow-up to my post this morning about United Airlines seemingly discontinuing service to Oakland this June, here’s a video photo tribute of DC-10s and 747s as seen at the OAK heavy maintenance base back in the 1990s.

While no official announcement seems to have come down the pike, United Airlines’ only flight out of Oakland – a daily OAK-DEN Airbus – no longer shows up in availability beginning with the summer schedule on June 5, 2012.

The last flight with seats for sale is UA352 on June 4 departing Oakland at 5:30am and arriving in Denver at 9:00am. A hat tip to Steve Tao’s tweet sent me over to this Airliners.net thread discussing the topic a couple of days ago and I’m all but convinced I can leave a question mark off my post title.

As the second poster in that thread mentions, Southwest Airlines ramped up DEN-OAK service to four times daily and given OAK has been such a Southwest stranglehold for ages, it really doesn’t come as a surprise. Except maybe for the fact that United isn’t replacing the service with Express flights.

A combination of competing service from United’s San Francisco hub next door, the carrier recently dropping OAK-LAX service and continued pressure from Southwest have probably made OAK a loss maker for some time.

I will happily eat my words and apologize to United and their Oakland employees should they simply be too busy fixing the bugs from the March 3 system conversion to have loaded in new United Express service. I don’t think I’ll have to, though.