My recent post about wanting to fly a red eye on a low cost airline had some people questioning my sanity. Somehow I get that question a lot.

It was the inaugural flight for a route, and one of their longest flights (if not the longest ignoring the longhaul division of the airline). I thought it would be fun and besides which it extends the expiry of my little stash of frequent flyer miles with them for another year.

How did it go? You can find out in the trip report which I’ve started on Flyer Talk.

This is part of a series of blog entries on how to get to countries and places. Here is a link to the index. I plan to eventually cover every country and some other places. If you have a request for a particular country or place please use the Contact link at the top, or leave a comment.

Quebec

Source: Bernard Gagnon

Quebec is well connected to neighbouring parts of Canada and USA by road.  There are buses to nearby Canadian cities as well as New York, and trains between Montreal and Ottawa, Toronto and New York.  Airlines flying to Quebec (Montreal only unless otherwise specified) include:

• Star Alliance – Air Canada (several Quebec airports), Continental (Quebec City), Lufthansa, Swiss, United (Quebec City), US Airways
• Oneworld – American, British Airways, Royal Jordanian
• Sky Team – Air France, Delta (Quebec City), KLM

TIP For longhaul travellers it may be cheaper to fly to a major US hub and connect from there on a separate ticket.

I get annoyed with Air NZ’s website sometimes.  The flight selection screen supposedly filters out invalid connections but there is an additional check later in the booking process which uses different logic to check and causes the booking to fail. Unfortunately this is only after entering in all flight info including name and payment details.

This bug has been around for over a year despite denials by Air NZ website staff.

I never thought the day would come that I’d fly a low cost carrier for several hours (followed by several more hours on a connecting flight on the same airline). To make matters worse one of the flights is a red eye (leaves late at night and arrives very early morning.

At least the load on the flights seems low (checked using an availability tool). Indeed their sale fares to launch the new route are still available in both directions.  Hopefully I can get an empty row on each flight to get some sleep on.

I’ll report back on how the flights went.

One lucky reader could win a trip for 2 to Australia’s Gold Coast for a week, thanks to American Express and Boarding Area.  The prize includes flights, accommodation, and more.  It is valued at over $10,000 and they’ve even come up with a plan to help the winner with the taxes.

Surfers Paradise (source: Bjorn Stromblom)

How to win

Make a comment on this post that answers the question “What’s your top tip for travelers who want to earn and use their loyalty points?” by 28 March.

I’ll pick the tip I like the best, and they’ll go in the draw to win the prize. Other Boarding Area blogs are participating also, so you have up to about 20 chances to win if you enter from the other Boarding Area blogs too. If the prize winner’s entry came from Musings of The Global Traveller, then I get an iPad, which I’ll be giving away to another lucky reader. So please enter and I hope you win.

Only 1 entry on this blog per person. Where someone posts multiple comments I’ll take the latest one. However, an entry can have more than one top tip

Unfortunately this prize is only valid for US residents (50 states + DC) who are 18 years or older.  Yes this annoys me too, I’ll try to do something else separately for my other readers – watch out for a giveaway post. For other rules see the T&Cs.

Make another entry at these other Boarding Area blogs too

Here are the links to the other competition posts. As well as entering by posting a comment here, you can also make more entries at each of the following links (direct to the relevant post in most cases):

• Flight Diversions
• Fly Gracefully
• Flying with Fish
• The Gate
• Loyalty Traveler
• Marshall Jackson on Travel
• Miles Quest
• Musings of The Global Traveller – you’ve already entered here, right?
• One Mile at a Time
• Pearls of Travel Wisdom
• Plane Reality
• Points Miles and Martinis
• Points Wizard
• Road Warriorette
• Things in the Sky
• TM Travel World
• Unroadwarrior
• View from the Wing
• The Wandering Aramean
• Wing and a Prayer

This is part of a series of blog entries on how to get to countries and places. Here is a link to the index. I plan to eventually cover every country and some other places. If you have a request for a particular country or place please use the Contact link at the top, or leave a comment.

Canary Islands

Source: Daniel Tenerife

Most visitors to Canary Islands arrive by air. Airlines flying to the Canary Islands (see key below) include:

• Star Alliance – Austrian (F/G/L/TS), bmi (F), SAS (G/TS), Spanair (F/L/P/TN/TS), Swiss (G/TS)
• Oneworld – Finnair (TS), Iberia (F/L/P/TN)
• Sky Team – Air Europa (F/G/L/P/TN/TS)
• Other selected - most European low cost airlines and some European full service airlines

Key – F=Fuerteventura, G=Gran Canaria (Las Palmas), L=Lanzarote, P=La Palma, TN=Tenerife Norte, TS=Tenerife Sul

TIP Travel in shoulder season (ie not midwinter or midsummer) for best fares.

TIP From outside Europe consider travelling to a major European city (such as Madrid, Barcelona, London, Paris) and then a separate ticket from there.  Madrid & Barcelona have the most flights and decent competition to the Canary Islands.

I now have a complete 16 flight itinerary that has every flight different to the ones I originally booked.  It was less than a month ago that I wondered when the last remaining unchanged flight would change. Today I see that flight has a new aircraft type (bye-bye upgrade) and also a new timing making it even more of a redeye than it already was (bye-bye sleep).  Unfortunately the change does not help me with my need for a hotel during short transit on the same itinerary.

The downward spiral of fares and services on most Tasman and South Pacific routes continues with news from Air New Zealand of a radical overhaul of their fares and service offerings.

The longer shorthaul routes (Auckland to Perth, Auckland to Tahiti/Papeete and Sydney to Rarotonga) are unaffected by the changes but for the rest there are significant changes.  Economy service will differ according to fare at 4 different levels, as outlined in the table below.

* Business class replaces Works Deluxe on 767, 777 & 747 flights only, and empty adjacent seat does not apply in business class. 

Air NZ has stated they intend that Works is equivalent to current fares, Works Deluxe is a heavily discounted business fare and the cheaper fares are more in line with low cost competition (ie Jetstar and Pacific Blue).  We’ll see if that is so when they release fare information later.

As alluded to, this means A320 aircraft are losing business class, business class seating and also space+ seating. Space+ seats at the front of economy are regular seats but with an extra few inches of legroom and are very popular with elite frequent flyers and high fare passengers who can select them currently.

As a result of the changes, on some trans-Tasman routes Air NZ will have regular economy seats, space+ seats (on 767 aircraft), current premium economy seats (until refurbishment of 777 and 747 is completed next year), new premium economy seats (initially only on 77W aircraft), old business class seats (767 only) and business premier seats (777 and 747 aircraft) - 6 completely different seats, 2 different levels of onboard service and 4 different levels of on the ground services.  Managing customer expectations will be tricky in this environment!

The changes start with Christchurch to Sydney on 18 August (for sale from 29 April) and roll out to other routes in November (for sale from September).

Air NZ hasn’t yet provided details on many aspects (treatment of elite passengers, longhaul connecting passengers, those who booked flights while the current services were promised, etc). This is causing some angst on the Air NZ forum of Flyer Talk, but it is refreshing an Air NZer was quickly posting responses to questions (purportedly the GM of Shorthaul himself). 

On the information provided so far it looks like Air NZ is providing more choice and not really taking stuff away except for those who only buy sale fares, but the devil is in the details.

Updated to add

Existing bookings for travel after the switch to the new offering will be treated as Works if economy fare and Works Deluxe if business class fare.

Lost in all the other changes, but check in kiosks will be progressively added for flights to Australia from June 2010.

The shorthaul service changes are finally up on Air NZ’s website, although there is no new or additional information.

Boarding Area (host of this blog and many other fine frequent flyer and business travel blogs) and American Express are teaming up to provide a fantastic prize to a lucky reader.  The prize is a week long trip for 2 to Gold Coast, Australia, including flights, accommodation, prize taxes, and more.

Source: Bjorn Stromblom

Watch for the post in a couple of days with more detail on the giveaway, and where you can make an entry.

As promised, I am answering some of Wendy Perrin’s readers’ frequent flyer questions. This batch of answers are about mileage devaluation.

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