Have a trip to Christchurch, New Zealand planned for spring break. Unfortunately, dates aren't flexible.

Only 1-stop option to CHC is through SFO on United (both flights). The SFO -> CHC leg is not a daily flight, so coming home we have to fly Air New Zealand.

I track prices using Google Flights - got an alert yesterday the price dropped.

First problem: Booking directly on United.com, the only two options for the CHC->AUK->IAH trip have either a 1 hour layover in AUK or a 7 hour layover. The 1 hour layover option comes with a warning.

Google Flights tells me there are flights pretty much every hour on the hour from CHC to AUK, so why won't United show me these options?

Booking the same itinerary through Air New Zealand costs several hundred dollars more (and if we have to cancel, what are we going to do with credits on ANZ?)

Possible work around...book two one way tickets. Also more expensive. CHC->AUK->IAH is "on sale" for $480, but the United flight through SFO is $1200+

I also notice that, while round trip on United.com is cheaper for the economy flight, the Premier Economy option (which gets you in the Premier Plus section of the 787) is $8000. But, if you book two one way tickets, this itinerary is only $5000. Still way more than I want to spend, but this price difference is ridiculous.

What about booking with points? My BF has 500k+, let's put them to good use, right? Nope. United will not let you book the return flight with points - it's "unavailable". And there is no way to price the flight with points and money. Only option here is to book two one way tickets, one on United (with points) and one on ANZ.

We actually considered that option, as paying United with points and buying an "Premium Economy" ticket on ANZ would have been about the same price. But, we ultimately decided not to burn all of his points on 1/2 of a trip, in part because we don't know what to expect on the ANZ long haul (other than it's a 777).

So, we book two RT economy tickets (4 hour layover in AUK, with several other flight options after ours, in case there is a problem) using the link to United.com via Google Flights and will keep our fingers crossed that maybe we can upgrade to Premium Plus at check in (I've been able to do this on previous flights).

Just when we think we are done, it's seat selection. I can sit in a regular economy seat, but the BF needs extra legroom, non-negotiable. IAH->SFO, we pay to upgrade him, and I sit in the seat behind him for no extra charge. SFO->CHC, the extra legroom seats range from $209-$269 each!. $500+ dollars later, we have our seats on the outbound planes.

Seat selection on the return flight isn't available until the purchase is complete. So, I buy the tickets and then use the record locator to pull the reservation up again. CHC->AUK is only an hour flight, so need to pay extra for a seat there. AUK->IAH ranges from $30-$60 per seat, and we actually end up with $30 seats with a little more legroom than some $60 seats. Seat options on this flight were much more limited (no bulkhead or exit row seats available), and IDK if that's because it's really that booked, or if we didn't buy the right fare class to be eligible to select those seats.

Well over an hour from when I started, we have tickets. Oh, and by the time I get through the process, the tickets are $70 more each than what the Google Flight alert said they were.

I'm absolutely thrilled (and fortunate) to be going to New Zealand, but the whole booking process was ridiculous and not at all transparent. And this isn't the first time I've had an experience like this (booking tickets from IAH to Sicily was similarly difficult).

AFAIC, ticket pricing in the airline industry has gotten about as bad as medical billing.

Ha! I posted while I was eating breakfast. So maybe 20 min all in. I type fast. I booked the ticket last night, and have been stewing over it ever since.

The length/complexity of the post is a direct correlation with how complicated booking a plane ticket has become!

Seriously, you're complaining that it took an hour and cost a few more $$$ than what Google told you.

This normally takes me days or weeks.

I have made the trip between the USA and Australia over 100 times so, this is routine for me (used to be, before the war).

I've routed through Auckland a few times.

Your best bet would have been to figure out the best option to get to Auckland, or maybe even Sydney and then take a domestic flight on Air New Zealand or Jetstar.

Give me a call next time.

There was no option to go through AUK on the outbound flight unless we accepted 3 stops and/or 24-35 hours of travel time. There is no IAH->AUK flight on the day we need to travel. Quantas through SYD was stupid expensive even for economy - over $9k.

Booking the actual ticket should not take an hour and a half. Research before the booking process is different (I do spend a lot of time on that). The actual booking should be straightforward, but it's not.

Pricing should also be transparent. The few $ price difference on economy isn't a big deal, but it is annoying that prices literally change before you can even complete the purchase. I wish fares were locked in for like 12 or 24 hours before they can change.

Even though we didn't end up booking premier, the price discrepancy between booking RT on United and two one way tickets through United and ANZ is outrageous and seems to be taking advantage of the average consumer.

But the biggest thing that annoys me most was United.com not giving me all the flight options. Even offering an itinerary with a 1 hour layover on an international connection is unacceptable, even more so considering there were 3 or 4 other alternatives. Had I not used Google flights, I wouldn't have even known there were better options.

If we had wanted to use points on a RT ticket, we wouldn't have been able to because United.com wouldn't offer the flight we wound up booking. I could only book that itinerary through the Google link. I've had this problem before, and I just don't understand it.

Ideally, I would have been more flexible on travel dates so that I could book entirely with United. I realize that's what caused the majority of the issues. But that just wasn't an option.

The reason I'm such a self-proclaimed "Expert" flying between the USA and AUS / NZ is for a few reasons.

Flying personal travel where I'm paying for it, I'm super cheap. Especially when flying a family of 4. And like your BF - I need lots of legroom.

I've done every permutation of one-way, points, multi-carriers and origin/destination airports - SFO/LAX/IAH/DFW/YVR (yes, I flew through Vancouver one time to save a buck). Also connections through MEL/AKL/ICN/NRT/HND/TPE/HNL/SIN (confession - it was my wife and daughter who I made take the LAX-NRT-SIN-SYD route - it was my money after all - at least I put them up in Marina Bay Sands for the overnight in Singapore. Unfortunately they only got a couple hours in Japan at the Narita airport so no monorail).

During her college years, I sent my oldest daughter (The Aggie) on the IAH-DME (fuel stop in Moscow) - SIN-SYD route for Christmas break one year. And my youngest daughter (The VMI grad) from IAD-DXB-SYD during her Christmas break (Dulles to Dubai and then another 14 hours to Sydney - I might not get father of the year for that).

Flying corporate travel, they're super cheap too. Our company policy provided flexibility on your ticket price if the fare difference was +/- $100 USD. Which is a total joke when you're talking about flights that costs thousands of dollars.

But here's the background on why the fares are so damn expensive to/from Australia and New Zealand.

First answer is that the routes used to be Closed.

When I made my first trip to Australia as a 13 y/o kid in 1983, we went on PanAm from LAX-HNL-AKL-SYD and then back to Honolulu before continuing on to NRT, HKG and Singapore on our way home to Saudi Arabia.

When PanAm went defunct, United bought the routes and when I first moved to Australia in 2007, the only two carriers flying between the USA and Australia nonstop were Qantas (Queensland And Northern Territory Air Service) and United.

Somewhere around 2009, they opened it up to Virgin Australia and Delta. So that was the first time that there was really any fare competition in the market. Later, American Airlines joined the mix.

Obviously Air New Zealand wouldn't be affected by Australian restrictions but, it's a small enough market that nobody is going to fly just there without getting the big prize of Sydney.

Second answer is Corporate Travel Policies (primarily American companies)

Most American companies have a travel policy that goes something like - if the flight is over 10 hours long, you can take Business Class. By the way, my company did not recognize 9 hours 55 minutes as 10 hours. So I had to ride Economy Class from Tokyo Narita to Sydney. Ridiculous.

The Round Trip ("return" in Aussie speak) flight price ranges that I experienced during my 12 years living in Australia were like this:

• Economy Class - $900 - $3,500
• Premium Economy - $2,500 - $4,500 (once that became a thing)
• Business Class - $6,000 - $13,000
• First Class - $25,000 (I was never in a position to pay this so I didn't have that close of a handle on the prices)

With so many Americans (especially Defense Contractors and such) having these kinds of travel policies, it's easy for them to charge exorbitant amounts for Business Class and/or Premium Economy.

Third Answer - Points dumping/usage and Blackout dates/flights

It is pretty common when you're booking flights using points to not have the full range of flights available to you. This has been going on for a long time and I've seen it on every airline that I've looked at. My points are primarily with United and Qantas but I use American from time to time.

In the industry, holiday destinations such as Hawaii are known as points dumping destinations where people might save points for a long time but they're not using those points to fly to Omaha, Nebraska or Roanoke, Virginia. They are saving those points to go to Hawaii, Orlando, Las Vegas, Cancun, Sydney, etc.

Airlines know this and that's why you'll see limited numbers of discounted points flights to these locations.

If you're bound and determined to use points and you have some flexibility with time, you can still make some interesting combinations - which it sounds like you tried.

For both of my daughters, during their College Christmas breaks, I used United points to get them to Honolulu, or to return from Honolulu and then used the Australian discount carrier Jetstar to take them between Sydney and Honolulu.

So, there are ways to play it but it does take a lot of research.

Funny story, on one of the trips for my oldest to get back to Texas A&M her freshman year, I flew her from Sydney to Honolulu on Jetstar. Then from Honolulu to IAH in First Class on a 777 using United Points. i happened to catch a discounted First Class fare for that Sunday morning departure. It was a crazy find but I gladly took it. I'm sure the other First Class cabin patrons were probably wondering what an 18 y/o was doing there and probably wouldn't guess the answer was - because dad is cheap.

Haha…I love that you self-identify as cheap!

I watch fares like a hawk and absolutely like to get the cheapest price. Buy when it means extra stops or excessively long travel times, that's where I draw the line. I just feel like it's tempting fate each time you have to take off and land.

And we do have hard boundaries on when we can depart and return, due to custody/visitation schedules. So that limits us.

We are keeping our fingers crossed that we can pay to upgrade to premier plus at check in. I was able to do that a couple of summers ago on a Milan to Chicago flight. The upgrade to economy with extra leg room was $259, and the premier plus cabin was $299. That was a no-brainer, but the catch was my son and I couldn't sit together. My BF will be much more comfy in the larger seat, but we can't pay $8k for it.

Now that I have the confirmation number, I may go back in and put in an upgrade request (which would use his miles). No guarantee on that either, but we aren't out anything if we don't get it.

Like I said, my biggest frustration is with United limiting the itinerary options. I never thought Google Flights would be my go-to option for BOOKING flights.

I also don't understand the $3k difference in premium economy when booking RT through United vs two one way tickets. That's just nuts.

The fact that Air New Zealand can get us from CHC to IAH for $480 and a $30 seat upgrade fee but United charges $1200 and $200+ in seat fees for the IAH to CHC route also blows my mind.

I even looked into booking round trip from SFO and getting flights on another airline for the IAH-SFO flights, but that was a lot more expensive, too.

We wound up paying just over $1700 per ticket, plus almost $600 total in seat fees (his upgraded seats were more expensive than mine). Not terrible for an international flight, it's just the process that's frustrating.

Booking yesterday made me wish we could use points to purchase upgraded economy seats. That would be much more valuable to us. But US airlines are drunk on seat fees.

TXTransplant said:

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Haha…I love that you self-identify as cheap!

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Oh, I'm totally cheap.

But, keep in mind, living in Australia, at one point I was spending $50k/yr on private girls school in Sydney so saving money on flights was a must.

Total travel budget of $12,000 was what it cost for my family of 4 to make a trip back to the USA every 2-3 years. I'm talking flights, hotels, rental car, etc.

I was lucky enough to dump tons of Marriott points the year we went to Puerto Rico and Miami.

Quote:

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But US airlines are drunk on seat fees.

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That and baggage fees. You'll get no argument there.

What I found during my travels was that it was almost impossible to upgrade your seat between the USA and Australia / New Zealand. At least for any reasonable prices whether that be dollars or miles.

It was also very difficult to get an upgrade between Singapore and Australia. But you could upgrade your seat between other locations such as Japan, China, Hong Kong going to Australia. That's how I wound up sitting across the aisle in Business Class from Midnight Oil frontman and Australian MP - Peter Garrett on a Qantas 747 from Tokyo to Sydney.

Domestic upgrades within Australia or New Zealand are much easier. Except for the fact that when I flew from Auckland to Wellington on Jetstar, they only had one class of service so no upgrade.


Oh, I just remembered on other wrinkle to the seat allocation puzzle.

When I was the highest status on Qantas, I flew in Economy several times at my own expense. What I came to find out is that if you're Platinum on Qantas, they will block out the seat next to you unless they're completely sold out. So those times where I had top status and was paying for my own seat, there was always an empty seat next to me that nobody else could reserve.

I'm not sure if you tried this, but generally when an airline isn't showing me the itinerary I want when I know it exists, I will try a "multi-city booking" and can force it that way.
Also, I'm not sure why united wasn't showing you the return flights with points? I just pulled up the AUK-IAH point calendar for Mar2025 and they had flights available every day for between 40k-80k United Points. Most of them were 1 stop through SFO from AUK to IAH. Unless you were trying to force it to show Christchurch-IAH, sometimes it can be wonky with longer itineraries.

SupermachJM said:

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I'm not sure if you tried this, but generally when an airline isn't showing me the itinerary I want when I know it exists, I will try a "multi-city booking" and can force it that way.
Also, I'm not sure why united wasn't showing you the return flights with points? I just pulled up the AUK-IAH point calendar for Mar2025 and they had flights available every day for between 40k-80k United Points. Most of them were 1 stop through SFO from AUK to IAH. Unless you were trying to force it to show Christchurch-IAH, sometimes it can be wonky with longer itineraries.

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That's an interesting strategy to use the multi-city booking search. I'll try it to see if it works.

As far as the points go, CHC is our ultimate destination, so that's the route I was looking for. We can get there on United, but we cannot get back on United on the day we need to travel (because there is no United flight leaving CHC). I assumed United just didn't want me to use their points on Air New Zealand flights. Sort of makes sense, since I know United would prefer we fly with them for both legs.

I will say, there may have been some options further down the list for using points that involved 2 or more stops. I didn't look that far, since it would have been an excessively long travel time for us.

I've never had enough points on any airline to book an international trip. So, I am admittedly a novice when it comes to "points hacking".

The current upgrade to Premier Economy on the 787 leg to CHC is 30k points and $0. So I think I'll put us on the waitlist for that.

Edited to add: multi city search doesn't solve the problem. I'm still only getting options to depart CHC at 11 am (7 hour layover) and 5 pm (1 hour layover). We are booked on a 2 pm flight, and there are other flights at noon, 1, 3, and 4 pm.

TXTransplant said:

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Edited to add: multi city search doesn't solve the problem. I'm still only getting options to depart CHC at 12 am (7 hour layover) and 5 pm (1 hour layover). We are booked on a 2 pm flight, and there are other flights at noon, 1, 3, and 4 pm.

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Due to when planes can takeoff and land, there is only a small window to fly between the USA and Australia or New Zealand. Depending on which direction you're going.

From Australia it was always between about 10:30am - 4:30pm departure for an arrival in the USA between 6am - 11am.

From the USA, it was always a departure from SFO/LAX, etc. between 10pm - 1am for an arrival in Australia at 6am. Some of that adjusted a little bit once they started flying from Dallas and Houston.

So the real problem is that you're not going to find flights outside of those windows which then affects your connection options.

In the scenario I described earlier where I flew my kids on a multi-carrier set of flights via HNL, they had to spend the night so that they didn't miss the next leg. The connection windows were either non-existent or too tight for my comfort.

Relevant to your scenario, I did wind up getting bumped up to Business Class from LAX - AKL one time sitting next to two Antarctic Researcher guys who were connecting from AKL - Christchurch. From there, they were catching a C-130 that only went to Antarctica on certain days of the week.

I don't think the window is the problem. The flight from AKL to IAH leaves at 745 pm. We should be able to fly from CHC to AKL any time before that. There are flights pretty much every hour on the hour.

But the only flights from CHC to AKL that United.com offers as part of their itinerary are at 11 am and 5 pm. And the 5 pm flight comes with a warning about a short layover.

Not sure what day exactly you're looking but it is weird. United has Saver awards for seemingly every flight from CHC - AKL (12.5k points) when searching just that leg independently. I do know sometimes there's an issue called 'Married Segments' where a longer flight isn't available unless paired with a shorter one. (Ex. DFW-SYD not being available on points but AMA-DFW-SYD having availability on the whole itinerary). This seems to be the opposite problem though. Have you tried the United App, or just the Desktop? Believe it or not, sometimes both will show differing availability.

Personally what I probably would have done is booked the long haul IAH - AKL the day I wanted on points and then booked the AKL - CHC separately. Going there wouldn't be an issue since you'd need to collect bags anyway, but coming back you'd probably need to ask if they could check your luggage from CHC all the way through to the US.

I guess since you've already booked your flights all this is a moot point, but good luck on getting upgrades! I'd also not rule out keeping an eye on award prices as the trip gets closer. Assuming your tickets are refundable sometimes they will open up Business class Saver availability on points in the weeks before a trip.

Wow, that's a lot of words. Boiling it all down, you want the cheapest flight possible matching your itinerary exactly with a one click book. If only....

Flights can file and fly out to New Zealand whenever they want. The reason you see most of them leaving at similar time windows is for three main reasons. ground crew and airport staff availability, ramp space, and crew scheduling.

BQ is a pond hopper he has always given good advice. My only add on is go nonstop whenever possible. Worth the extra nickel. NZ is beautiful. Safe travels

We tried the app and the website. App was being completely uncooperative. Plus, I'm old and don't think we should even be booking plane tickets on apps.

So I switched to desktop. I made the mistake first of searching for the flights and then asking it to change the price from $ to points. Got an error message for that.

So, I went back and searched again, but clicked the box that says to give cost in points before hitting the search button.

Results came up for the outbound flight. It was 200 or 220k points and $38 per person, IIRC. When I selected that flight and went on to the return flight, I got a wall of "unavailable".

Maybe the website was malfunctioning? It was being REALLY slow, and I kept having to reenter his login info.

Even of it had worked, though, I still had the issue of United not giving me the outbound itinerary that I wanted. I could only get that going through Google flights, which is a $ search only.

Just to clarify, I could not book IAH direct to AKL. IAH to AKL with a stop was not any cheaper than what I booked, and we would have had to add a third flight to get to CHC. I didn't look at that option on points, but we really didn't want the extra stop.

We did look at booking IAH to CHC one way with points (and booking the trip home directly with Air New Zealand). That wasn't a terrible option, it just took a lot of points.

Only AKL to IAH was an option, and that is Air New Zealand.

fire09 said:

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Wow, that's a lot of words. Boiling it all down, you want the cheapest flight possible matching your itinerary exactly with a one click book. If only....

Flights can file and fly out to New Zealand whenever they want. The reason you see most of them leaving at similar time windows is for three main reasons. ground crew and airport staff availability, ramp space, and crew scheduling.

BQ is a pond hopper he has always given good advice. My only add on is go nonstop whenever possible. Worth the extra nickel. NZ is beautiful. Safe travels

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Actually, That is not what I expected at all.

What I do expect is for United to show me all available options for flights. When the top search result is a flight with a warning that the layover is too short (and there are multiple other alternatives), that's a problem.

There was no price difference in the flights leaving CHC, whether we left at 11 am, 5 pm, or something in between. I can't imagine most people want a 7 hour layover before a 13 hour flight.

If I could have booked a nonstop, I would have. I will even pay a premium for that. It just wasn't an option. Air New Zealand doesn't fly to/from IAH every day, and United doesn't operate the SFO-CHC flight every day. We had the unfortunate luck of needing flights on one of the days off.

I wouldn't have done more than one stop just to save a few $. It's not worth the hassle/risk.

I also don't expect to be price gouged by one airline over another. It was out of our budget to book premier economy, but it appears that's exactly what United is doing with that option, if you book that fare class RT.

Alright, so I logged back into his account, and there is a my bad on this.

I was looking at buying premium economy with points. Those flights are unavailable (business is also unavailable) on the CHC-AKL-IAH return flight.

I can book standard economy both ways (for 150400 points). And lo and behold the 925 am, 1030 am, 1 pm, and 3 pm departing flights from CHC to AKL show up as options. The 11 am and 5 pm departures do not show up in a points search, but still show up if you search by $. The 2 pm option we are booked on still does not show either way (cash or points).

I just didn't remember the standard economy points options because when I did the search, I was looking to use points to upgrade to premier economy.

Ahhhhhh
That makes a lot of sense. I've seen sometimes when certain cabin classes aren't seen by the system for whatever reason. What you just found seems a lot more in line with what I would have expected.

I think it's because on long haul flights, they don't have Premium Economy on every type of aircraft.

Kind of depends if it's a 2 Class or 3 Class aircraft. I don't think there are too many 4 Class aircraft left and probably none on United since they introduced Polaris.

Air NZ had a mid-tier fare, between economy and business. It was priced somewhat comparably to United premium economy. And the seat map on the 777 looked like it had a cabin with premium economy seats, but it was hard to tell since those seats weren't available to select. IIRC, there was no option to upgrade at all (I don't even remember seeing a business class on that seat map) on the flight from CHC to AKL, so I can kind of understand why points aren't available if it's not a 1:1 equivalent.

I actually didn't want to pay for upgrades on the IAH-SFO flight (that's sort of a waste of $ and points), so that's why we didn't end up using points at all.

I have signed us up for the premium economy waitlist for the United long haul flight. That was only 30k points pp.

I cannot see any way to upgrade the Air NZ long haul without purchasing a ticket outright. Maybe they will offer an upgrade at check in, if there are seats available?