VA Flights to NZ - why has rewards availability dropped?

[burmans]

Anyone else noticed that rewards seats to NZ seem to have considerably dried up. You can get ASA's or Air NZ but at considerably higher cost than straight reward seats. QF seems a much better option these days.

This is to ZQN, WLG and AKL while ZQN always dried up a bit over winter, have never seen it this bad before.

 

[Warks]

I've always struggled to get award seats to NZ on VA. Hate to think it's got worse!

 

[Buzzard]

Just as we were thinking of going :-|

 

[drewbles]

VA Award Seat availability has tightened up significanly across the board. This started late last year unfortunately. I was at the Freddies the other week where they won best award availability for AP (For the 4th year running) but suspect that run will be over.

Fortunately the taxes/charges associated haven't gone up though. It's just finding availability.

 

[burmans]

This started late last year unfortunately. I was at the Freddies the other week where they won best award availability for AP (For the 4th year running) but suspect that run will be over.

Yes I go that sense of irony when I saw their banner advertising the win when I was having trouble finding availability!