Air NZ has been experimenting with travel insurance being opt-out instead of the more customer-friendly opt-in.  Ie travel insurance is automatically included (for extra $) unless you take a step to unselect it.  This is a practice I detest.  I’m not alone in hating this – US travel consumer advocate Christopher Elliott calls insurance opt-out reprehensible. 

You come to expect it as a money grab from low cost airlines, but it isn’t a practice I’d associated with Air NZ … until recently.

Air New Zealand claims insurance opt-out is an industry norm.  However, that wasn’t my experience with dummy bookings for their main competitors and a few other sites.  A quick browse reveals the following airlines and online travel agents have insurance opt-out (please let me know if I’ve missed some):

• Air NZ
• Frontier
• Jetstar
• Orbitz
• Pacific Blue
• Spirit
• Travelocity
• Yahoo Travel

Spot the odd one out!  For those surprised not to see Ryanair (or EasyJet or …) in the list above, that is only thanks to EU regulations banning the practice.

If you find you have purchased travel insurance by accident, almost everyone will allow it to be cancelled if you call within 24 hours (and some have longer cooling off periods).  However, it is still annoying to do so and doesn’t help those who don’t want insurance and didn’t notice they have bought it. 

Air New Zealand please change insurance to being opt-in – you’ll annoy a lot less customers and potential customers, as well as saving a lot of time and effort in dealing with cancellations and customer complaints.

At the start of the year Air New Zealand launched their new longhaul products (primarily the skycouch in economy and a greatly improved premium economy seat, but with other service changes too) with a lot of hype.  The new products will be available on 77W aircraft, and were due to commence around November with Auckland to Melbourne familiarisation flights then enter longhaul to Los Angeles early December.  This week, Air NZ has quietly pushed back the launch to January 2011 and changed the trans-Tasman route operated by 77W from Melbourne to Brisbane.

In the last few years I’ve seen and experienced delayed launches of new products/aircraft time and again – most famously Singapore Airlines first A380 flight was delayed from June 2006 to October 2008.  My expectations were so low that I didn’t bother booking the inaugural flight for Air New Zealand’s 77W.  I still want to take the first flight, if my schedule permits, but I’ll wait a bit more before booking in case the launch slips again.

One of my peeves are websites that don’t hold a fare when you select flights and only after you’ve entered your details let you know the fare is not available.

Low cost airline Jetstar does this whenever there is a super sale, which is why I no longer bother.  Air New Zealand grab-a-seat also does this meaning getting $1 (or $20 or whatever) fares is a lottery even after you’ve selected the flights.

Yesterday I encountered similar on a normal, non-sale fare with Emirates.  No matter which flights I selected from the many options available, when I hit the button for purchase now (after entering all my details) I was advised the fare wasn’t available and to use search by schedule function instead.  The search by schedule consistently returned fares about $2000 more than the search by price function, for the exact same flights and dates.

This website flaws are annoying and not limited to the 3 airlines I’ve mentioned.  What airline/online TA website issues do you find annoying?  What do you do about it?

Emirates have a sale today through Thursday 22 July in economy and business class for New Zealand to Australia (ie Auckland to Brisbane/Sydney/Melbourne and Christchurch to Sydney). Economy class travel dates for next several months excluding school holidays, business class travel dates now until mid December.

As usual Air NZ and Qantas have matched, kind of. Air NZ business class fares are slightly higher than Emirates, with Qantas higher again (and blackouts on certain flights).

Wendy Perrin of Perrin Post recently put a reader question from Steve Belkin (you may recall my posts on his Competitours personal amazing race offering) to Richard Branson about the possibility of a future Virgin Alliance – you can see Richard talking about a Virgin alliance here.  Last week Gary Leff commented on which non-Virgin airlines might be interested in joining Virgin in a fourth major airline alliance.

For those who may be unfamiliar, the Virgin airlines are:

• Virgin Atlantic (51% owned by Virgin Group)
• Virgin Blue (26% owned by Virgin Group) – plus subsidiaries Pacific Blue (operates within NZ and across South Pacific), Polynesian Blue (operates to & from Samoa), and V Australia (operates longhaul)
• Virgin America (25% owned by Virgin Group)
• Air Nigeria (49% owned by Virgin Group)
• Air Asia X (20% owned by Virgin Group)
• Virgin Galactic (100% owned by Virgin Group) – not yet operating commercial service

The route network of these airlines together is fairly impressive (see below), although far short of the 3 main airline alliances (Star Alliance, Oneworld, Sky Team).

(map courtesy of Great Circle Mapper)

If Singapore Airlines (49% owner of Virgin Atlantic) was added, the network is even better as seen below.  (Note Virgin Blue domestic flights not shown due to clutter.)

(map courtesy of Great Circle Mapper)

It has taken the 3 main Virgin airlines (Atlantic, Blue and America) a long time to do something as basic as offer earning and redemption on each other’s flights, and this still isn’t complete – see Virgin earning on other Virgin expands but not perfect.  Thus I’m not holding out hope of a Virgin Alliance any time soon.

In the meantime we are currently waiting on reviews by competition authorities in both Australia and New Zealand on the proposed alliance between Virgin Blue and Air NZ, which is a limited alliance restricted to co-operation on trans-Tasman routes only.

Qantas Frequent Flyer and Air NZ Airpoints both charge join fees in their home markets (and some other parts of the world).  They can both be avoided, at the moment.

View from the Wing refers to the Flyer Talk thread on signing up to Qantas via Woolworths Everyday Rewards, or having a US address (for example).

For Air NZ Airpoints, NZ residents can avoid the fee by using the code APFRIEND and signing up by 31 May 2010. Residents of UK (and some other countries) are not charged the join fee in the first place.

As posted by the Wandering Aramean, Air France are flying A380 for a few days a week between Paris CDG and London Heathrow during (northern) summer.  Air France also has promotional fares (eg London to Paris return £80 for economy and £280 for business class). Be quick – many seats have already gone at these sale fares.

These short hops on longhaul aircraft often happen when an airline introduces a new aircraft type. They are an easy way for the airline to train up lots of flight and cabin crew in a short period of time (of course there is also training before they fly the aircraft!).  I’m waiting for Air New Zealand’s 77W to arrive to take one such flight across the Tasman as a cheap way to try out their new longhaul seats in economy, premium economy and business class.

Air NZ has a non-mileage earning (except when credited to Air New Zealand Airpoints) fare from Los Angeles and San Francisco to Auckland return for $399+tax, about $480 all in.  Travel to NZ in May, with return late May or June. See sale page for more info.

Edited to add – some more dates in June have been added for both directions, and Qantas has a limited match (Los Angeles to Auckland only).

It is almost a month since Air New Zealand announced upcoming changes to their shorthaul products.

Since then there has been lots of communication with some of their customers, but also lots of confusion due to incomplete and mixed messages from Air NZ.

I think the underlying cause is that Air New Zealand had decided they needed to make changes but were unclear how well received they would be. Thus they decided to trial changes on the Christchurch to Sydney route. This makes some sense as it is not the most important route on the network (so an experiment is less disruptive than on some other routes) and also has some of the fiercest competition thanks to Jetstar’s focus on Christchurch and Pacific Blue being based in Christchurch (both low cost airlines).

However it is now clear that some details haven’t been fully thought through yet. Sine they have already embarked on communicating with their customers the upcoming changes, any changes in how it works creates complications and difficulties in keeping on message.

While infrequent flyers may not even be aware of the confusion and odd messaging, for frequent travellers this is a surprise. In recent years Air NZ has done very well with marketing – their nothing to hide campaign got instant worldwide attention, as did their launch late last year of new longhaul products (which commence operation November 2010).

So far Air New Zealand has been silent on the inconsistency between “nothing to hide” and the new smorgasbord pricing. I wonder if/when we’ll see Qantas or Emirates trumpet this?

Last month Air New Zealand announced sweeping changes to their shorthaul product on most flights between New Zealand and Australia plus the South Pacific.  The changes, due to commence from August on a trial route and November for other routes, are intended to help Air New Zealand compete with low cost carriers Jetstar and Pacific Blue whilst also retaining full service options for passengers who want them.  Already business class has been removed from sale on A320 flights from the relevant dates onwards.

Nearly 3 weeks on, there is considerable confusion over some details of high interest to frequent flyers.  Poorly written communications with their Airpoints and Koru Club members contradict other information such as posted on the Air NZ website, and also imply some benefits taken for granted may be removed (such as Star Alliance gold free extra luggage allowance if travelling on the cheapest fares).

There is a bright spot, however.  Thanks to customer feedback Air NZ has reversed their decision to remove space+, although the current proposal is weaker than the existing space+ seating (much fewer seats & less legroom for most of these).  I notice the date from which the new product will be available for sale has been quietly pushed back to May (from April), presumably to allow more time to iron out some of the kinks already identified.

Once we get a bit more detail, I’ll explain the implications and options available for people with existing and future bookings.  Hint: business class and star alliance gold passengers on these routes seem to come off worst with the changes, so hopefully Air New Zealand still has some tricks up their sleeves to retain these high yielding passengers.