Air New Zealand Releases Last-Minute Award Seats

Air New Zealand has recently released an abundance of award seats in both economy class and business class for last-minute bookings.

This is an unusual development, since award seats on Air New Zealand flights have historically been quite difficult to come by.

If you’re looking to fly to New Zealand in the near future, now is an excellent opportunity to score a direct routing booked with points.

Air New Zealand Releases Last-Minute Award Seats

While Air New Zealand has offered direct flights between North America and its hub in Auckland for quite some time, award seats have been difficult to find, especially if you’re looking to travel in business class.

In the past, there’s been no real pattern as to how award seats were released, which made it a quite a challenge to book. However, this appears to have changed, as there’s currently plenty of award availability between North America and New Zealand for last-minute bookings.

As it stands, the most availability seems to be for travel out of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Houston. However, there are also a few seats available from Chicago.

Regrettably, even though Air New Zealand flies to Vancouver, there only seems to be award seats in economy class at this time.

The good news is that there’s availability in both directions, which means that you’d be able to fly to and from New Zealand without having to worry about finding a different itinerary in either direction, which can be challenging.

Currently, the vast majority of award availability is for travel throughout the month of August until the first week of September. Therefore, if you’re able to fly to or from New Zealand soon, be sure to book sooner rather than later.

It’s worth noting that it’s unclear if this is a one-off occurrence, or if it signals a change in Air New Zealand’s approach to award availability.

How to Book Air New Zealand Flights with Points

When it comes to booking award flights on Air New Zealand, the best programs to use are Avianca LifeMiles or Air Canada Aeroplan.

This is because Aeroplan and LifeMiles have the most favourable pricing when compared to other Star Alliance partner airlines, such as United MileagePlus. Furthermore, both programs have an abundance of transfer partners, which makes it easy to accrue points.

As a reminder, Aeroplan is a 1:1…