I've written plenty about airfares in recent years, but in light of the current obsession in this country with airfare prices, I feel it's time to once again remind people about one of my biggest travel tips for booking flights with Air New Zealand.
If you're like most people out there you'll automatically head over to airnewzealand.co.nz to search for fares, maybe see a flight you like, and potentially book it. But what if I told you that you were doing this all wrong?
What if I told you there is a way to potentially save yourself money and get a cheaper seat on the very same day, or potentially even the very same flight, simply by looking elsewhere else?
Beyond the customer base of frequent flyers such as myself, most people will be totally unaware Air New Zealand's cheapest airfares are only available from Grabaseat on the grabaseat.co.nz website, and not from the main Air New Zealand website.
Grabaseat is nothing new. The Grabaseat brand and website has been around now for nearly two decades, but despite this it's safe to say a large percentage of the traveling public would not use the site daily, nor even think of it as a location to go to first when they're searching for airfares.
In 2006 Air New Zealand launched the Grabaseat site to offer discounted flights that were typically for travel a few months out. With most travel at the time still being booked using a travel agent, and holidays planned well in advance, it was a way of offering passengers great deals on flights, and was also a way for the airline to grow it's online business by offering fares that were cheaper than those that could be offered by travel agents.
Over time Grabaseat has evolved into a site that offers a combination of two different types of offerings - "Grabaseat" fares and "Grabaseat Exclusive Greenlight" fares.
Most Grabaseat deals are for travel at least two to three months out, with fares normally booked into P booking class. The same priced P class fares are typically available on both the Grabaseat and Air New Zealand websites. Grabaseat Exclusive Greenlight deals are available for travel typically within the next one to two months and are typically booked into F class. F class fares are not available on the main Air New Zealand website and are only visible from the Grabaseat website - which is the key point of this entire article.
F booking class is a special class that does not earn Airpoints Dollars but does earn Status Points. International flights booked into F class are also ineligible for upgrades meaning you can't lodge a Recognition Upgrade, an Airpoints Dollar upgrade, or bid for a OneUp upgrade on a F class airfare. F class international fares have be kept separate from the main Air New Zealand site because they are a discounted promotional fare that does have restrictions on it that do not apply to any flights booked on the main Air New Zealand website.
F class domestic fares are identical to other domestic fare classes with no additional restrictions, with the only difference between the fare types being that they do not earn Airpoints Dollars.
With plenty of people complaining about high airfares these days it pays to always check the Grabaseat website first for the best deals, because you could well find fares on the very same dates that you want to travel on that are significantly cheaper than the cheapest fares available on the Air New Zealand website.
Let's have a quick look on a few random routes and prices over the next few weeks. I have randomly chosen Wellington to Timaru, Auckland to Christchuch, Auckland to Rotorua, and Wellington to Auckland for this comparison.
In the screenshots below I've only opted to show screenshots for 7 days for each route as an example - I could have chosen others, but two of these routes have flights I'll probably be taking in the next few weeks so I was doing my own research as well!
AKL-CHC on grabaseat.co.nz showing $74 GAS F class fares across multiple dates.
AKL-CHC on airnewzealand.co.nz without F class Grabaseat Greenlight fares.
AKL-ROT on grabaseat.co.nz showing $69 GAS F class fares across multiple dates.
AKL-ROT on airnewzealand.co.nz without F class Grabaseat Greenlight fares.
AKL-WLG on grabaseat.co.nz showing $74 GAS F class fares across multiple dates.
AKL-WLG on airnewzealand.co.nz without F class Grabaseat Greenlight fares.
WLG-AKL on grabaseat.co.nz showing $74 GAS F class fares across multiple dates.
WLG-AKL on airnewzealand.co.nz without F class Grabaseat Greenlight fares.
CHC-AKL on grabaseat.co.nz showing $74 GAS F class fares across multiple dates.
CHC-AKL on airnewzealand.co.nz without F class Grabaseat Greenlight fares.
WLG-TIU on grabaseat.co.nz showing $79 GAS F class fares across multiple dates.
WLG-TIU on airnewzealand.co.nz without F class Grabaseat Greenlight fares.
These are just a handful of examples on routes showing Grabaseat Exclusive Greenlight fares that are often under half the price of the cheapest fares from the Air New Zealand website on the same flights.
As somebody who has a pretty good understanding of Air New Zealand's pricing and revenue management tactics, I need to make it very clear that Grabaseat Exclusive Greenlight fares are not available on all routes all of the time, and are not going to be available on every flight. You will often find these fares are only often only available outside peak travel times and weekends.
It really surprises me that close to 18 months on from my last pricing post that talked about Grabaseat that nothing has changed. I honestly still struggle to comprehend why that in today's competitive aviation market that Air New Zealand still only offers it's cheapest flights only to those customers who are savvy enough to know about Grabaseat - it's like some sort of secret airfare club where only those who are in the know can score a deal.
Air New Zealand is currently facing a media barrage of (mostly) poorly written and researched articles in many media outlets from both journalists and opinion piece writers criticising them for high fares, and surprisingly seem to be do doing little to actually combat the bad publicity and public perception of high prices.
On the domestic front Jetstar are targeting highly profitable main trunk routes such as Auckland - Christchurch and increasing flight numbers significantly to intentionally hurt Air New Zealand. This in itself poses an interesting question - why when Air New Zealand have cheap fares available are they seemingly not wanting people to know about them? With Jetstar carefully positioning itself to undercut Air New Zealand pricing, and very quickly gaining a significant numbers of very happy customers due to their on-time performance which has consistently been better than Air New Zealand, it really seems to be an incredibly strange strategy to still be maintaining.
The average consumer who sits down and compares both Jetstar and Air New Zealand using their websites, but who doesn't know about Grabseat is potentially missing out on a great deal - and Air New Zealand are also potentially missing out a customer when that person opts to book a Jetstar flight over what is more than likely a more expensive flight on the Air New Zealand website.
Lets take a look at flights between Auckland to Christchurch on a totally random date in December - Monday December 15th
- Air New Zealand's cheapest flight on the airnewzealand.co.nz website is $120 at 6am with various more expensive prices up to and over $200 across the day
- Jetstar's cheapest price between Auckland and Christchurch is $129 at 8:55pm with other flights all under $200
- Air New Zealand's cheapest flight on the grabaseat.co.nz website is $74, with that price available at 6am, 6pm, 8pm and 8:45pm
The average price conscious consumer with no knowledge of Grabaseat would see Jetstar as potentially the best option for travel on that date - but Air New Zealand actually have the best pricing and the best availability of those $74 fares - if you're savvy enough to know about Grabaseat.
Likewise somebody in Timaru who wanted to come to Wellington for an overnight trip before Xmas would see typical return airfares in the $350 - $500 range on the Air New Zealand website. Between now and the week before Xmas the Grabaseat website has $79 airfares available in both directions available on around 50% of those dates, meaning they could have an overnight trip for $158 - that's a big difference.
At a time when consumers rightly or wrongly believe Air New Zealand airfares are expensive, it simply defies belief that Air New Zealand are not wanting the whole world to know that on this day (and actually many other days too) they've actually got better pricing that Jetstar. I struggle to understand how anybody in revenue management can think 'hiding' your cheapest fares so that customers opt to go with the competition is a winning strategy.
Surely it's time to relegate domestic F class Grabaseat Exclusive Greenlight Fares to the history books after all these years, and simply use P class fares on the main airnewzealand.co.nz site as a competitive pricing tool so that every customer has access to the same prices? It's a strategy that seems to work for pretty much every other airline in the world.
I really do wish for the Air New Zealand of old which was an agile business that wanted to be the best airline in the world. Right now I just see an airline that seems to have totally lost its way and wants to focus on being average. That's something that is sad, very, very sad.
