Air New Zealand today invited customers to register their interest for a new "trial" product, Grabaseat Gotta Getaway. The concept sounds simple enough - for $95 per year (and $50 each for up to three additional people who are attached to the same account) you'll be able to save up to 50% off selected flights when booked within 7 days of travel. You'll need to stay away for a minimum of two nights, and return within 14 days.

From those who register, 1000 people will be selected to "trial" the product for a 12 month period.

The Air New Zealand website makes it sound very straight forward -

 

So what is the Grabaseat Gotta Getaway product, and what are the catches?

In it's simplest form, Grabaseat Gotta Getaway is what is says it is. Customers who are selected to be part of the trial who pay their $95 yearly fee will be able to book flights for travel and save up to 50% off the available fares at the time of booking. It's here that the catches apply.

Virtually every airline around the world sells seats in the same way - they offer various booking classes at various price points, with a certain number of seats available at each price point. I wrote an article explaining this in detail several years ago.

On an Air New Zealand domestic flight there are 14 different booking classes, and 4 different fare basis levels (seat only, seat+bag, flexitime and flexidate). This means there could be up to 56 fare price points for each flight.

The snapshot below shows some current pricing for each booking class on flights from Auckland for seat only fares. The numbers of seats allocated for each booking class is part of the magic that occurs in the background of airline booking engines, but typically a variable number of seats will be sold at each fare level, and once the seats from the lower booking classes are sold, the price goes up to the next booking class - so for example on an Airbus A320 flight there may be 10x P class seats, 6x K class seats, 6x X class and so on. All booking classes are not necessarily available on every flight.

Y class fares are full priced fares, and would (typically) be the last seats sold on a plane once every other booking class had been sold.

At any point in time prices can also go backwards, and Air New Zealand can change their booking class availability up to around half a dozen times per day. It's not uncommon to see fares from a lower booking class randomly appear days out from travel as the airline tries to fill seats.

 

The terms and conditions for Grabaseat Gotta Getaway seem pretty straight forward, until you get to the details of how it actually works. The key thing here is that the average Air New Zealand customer with zero knowledge of airline booking classes would have precisely zero understanding of what it actually means.

The key line here is the last one. Qualifying Flights are limited to the fare classes: L, T, W, V, Q

If you look on the fare chart above you'll see that L, T, W, V and Q sit in the middle of the columns. It means you won't be able to save on their lower priced P, K, X, G or S booking classes, nor the more expensive H, M,B or Y booking classes.

Air New Zealand have told us that with Grabaseat Gotta Getaway, a "last minute weekend away is closer than you think". Lets put that to the test.

As I sit here on a cold and wet Wednesday night I randomly selected a few routes for this weekend to actually see how I'd be able to use Grabaseat Gotta Getaway if I was one of the lucky 1000 people selected for the product.

Lets have a look at flights from Wellington to Rotorua -

There are four different flight options to get from Wellington to Rotorua on Friday. At the time of writing this Air New Zealand are willing to sell a minimum of 9 seats on the 2:40pm, 8:45am and 7:00am flights. The 6:10pm flight is near full, with only a single seat available for purchase.

The 2:40pm flight tickles my fancy, so lets select it.

At the top of the Air New Zealand booking site you'll see the booking class of your flight. In this case it's B. What does that mean? It means you can't use that fare to book your up to 50% off Grabaseat Gotta Getaway flight because it's not an eligible booking class. Remember you can only book flights that are L, T, W, V or Q.

The bad news is that the other Rotorua flights are all full Y class. I guess I won't be going to Rotorua for my Grabaseat Gotta Getaway weekend. 🙁

How about Queenstown?

The simple answer is yeah nah. Only full Y class fares are available from Wellington to Queenstown meaning you couldn't use your up to 50% off discount.

What does "up to 50%" really mean anyway? Is it like a Briscoes "up to 50% off sale" where some things are 50% off but most are only 20% off? Nobody really knows, because the terms and conditions don't make it clear at all. Does it mean that you'll save 50% all the time? We simply don't know.

How about Christchurch? I really want to go away this weekend. Surely a visit to Christchurch will be possible if I can't go to Rotorua or Queenstown?

Looks like the cheapest fares from Wellington to Christchurch this weekend are H class. There is zero availability of L, T, W, V or Q fares.

By now I'm starting to get a little annoyed. Air New Zealand have pitched a product offering up to 50% off but there is nowhere to go.

Surely I can visit Nelson? Nope. Only H class available.

Surely I can visit Blenheim? Nope. Only M class available.

Surely I can visit Invercargill? Nope. Only H class available.

Surely I can visit Hokitika? Nope. Only M class available.

Surely I can visit Dunedin? Nope. Only M class available.

Surely I can visit Hamilton? Nope. Only H class available. What is the world coming to when you can't even get a cheap flight to spend a weekend in the city of the future?

Surely I can visit Auckland? Yes! Finally! Somewhere I can visit. But why?

Surely I can visit sunny Kerikeri? Woohoo! V class availability

Oh. But wait. I'll have to leave Wellington at 8:15am and will arrive in Kerikeri at 5:15pm with a 7hr5m transit in Auckland because of the married fare in the revenue system that insists the booking class for the Wellington to Auckland and Auckland to Kerikeri sectors must be the same. This means the flight to Auckland can't connect with earlier flights from Auckland to Kerikeri because the required matching booking class isn't available - so you'll just need to hang around the airport for 7 hours.

I think I'll skip my plans of a weekend away with up to 50% off and just stay at home.

What were Air New Zealand's marketing team thinking when they came up with this idea? The average consumer has zero idea about flight booking classes and would struggle to understand why they can't fly anywhere with their Grabaseat Gotta Getaway membership after they've just been promised "up to 50% off" airfares (why is it all I can think of is Briscoes when I type that?)

Mainstream media were all over the announcement today with it being very clear that some had zero understanding of what they were writing about, with factual errors by journalists who had clearly had not read the terms and conditions of the product, and lacked basic knowledge of how virtually every airline in the world prices and sells tickets.

stuff.co.nz told us this

Air New Zealand is to launch a discount airfare club, which could slash fares by 50 per cent.

Stuff can reveal the national carrier is launching a subscription service that provides heavily discounted last-minute fares. It will be called the Grabaseat Gotta Getaway and will initially be run as a trial.

For a $95 annual fee, travellers will receive up to 50 per cent off return domestic flights around New Zealand when booked within seven days of travel.

. . .

Air New Zealand's chief customer and sales officer, Leanne Geraghty, expects the scheme to be hugely popular. “Our customer research is telling us there is growing demand for spontaneous travel coming from Kiwis.

“Typically closer to travel, because of the dynamics of demand and supply, prices are sometimes a little bit higher – which might dampen the ability for some of that spontaneous travel. So we have been working to come up with a concept that would help us meet that market.”

The scheme is designed for those who want a getaway at the drop of a hat.

. . .

The rate of discount will vary depending on how many seats are left on each flight. For example, a flight next week from Auckland to Whangarei advertised for $70 could be offered under the scheme for as little as $35.

 

Anybody reading that story would probably think that any airfare that was available last minute at up to 50% off. That is simply not the case.

They would also think they could get a $70 airfare discounted down to $35, which once again is simply not the case (an Auckland to Whangarei $70 airfare is a G class fare, which is ineligible for the discount). To me it demonstrates the issues with journalists with minimal knowledge of the travel industry writing content based off media releases.

As somebody who spends way to much time booking flights I have a pretty good knowledge of airline pricing. I know that flights for weekend travel are typically always expensive a few days out, and the odds of the appropriate booking classes eligible for a Grabaseat Gotta Getaway discount being available are not good at the best of times. If you're requiring two flights to get somewhere your chances will be almost non existent.

Customers "lucky" enough to pay $95 for the honour of being part of this "trial" are almost certainly going to find themselves disappointed by the real world realities of it. It's a money grab for infrequent travelers, pure and simple. The concept is great, but I simply don't know what was going through the minds of those at Air New Zealand who created the product - do they really have such a lack of understanding of the airline's own pricing strategies that they didn't realise how limited the product will actually be?

For those who do want good value last minute airfares, Air New Zealand already sell regional Gotta Go fares which are available between 60 and 90 minutes out and offer regional flights for $169 for a single sector, or $249 for a two sector flight. Just be aware of the catch that these fares will only be sold if there are more than 5 seats available, or 3 seats if you're an Airpoints Elite customer.

 

UPDATE 03/06/2021

I have been selected to participate in this trial, and after paying for Grabaseat Gotta Getaway today I was able to try creating some dummy bookings for this coming weekend.

The good news is that Air New Zealand have seemingly expanded on the booking classes that are eligible for the discount, with H and M class now eligible for discounts.

The FAQ and T&C on their website and the documentation included with the information pack sent to members makes no mention of these classes, and mentions in multiple areas that L, T, W, V or Q class fares are required for a discount to become available.

A quick search across a number of destinations shows that without H and M class availability it would be very difficult to utilise Grabaseat Gotta Getaway for discounted airfares this coming weekend (or in my experience, many weekends if you want last minute regional travel), but with H and M class included it opens up a lot more possibilities that may make the Grabaseat Gotta Getaway product actually very usable. for those who were lucky enough to be selected to be part of the trial.

The following example shows flight options from Wellington to Queenstown with the $129 fare being H class and $143 fares being M class (shown including the 50% discount). The $336 fare is B class, and the $395 fare Y class (full fare).

With H and M class excluded no Grabaseat Gotta Getaway discounts would apply and the fare options would be $248, $286, $336 and $395

In the case of flights from Wellington to Rotorua there is zero availability for discounted flights on Friday 4th June as all flights only have full fare Y class fares remaining. On Saturday 5th June there are $128 H class fares (shown including the 50% discount) available on a single flight, with the other flight option only being $358 for full fare Y class. Once again without the addition of H and M class there would be zero availability of eligible fare classes on this route.