This is a something that I think is particularly valuable for all travellers going to New Zealand or anywhere, in fact, where you will be flying on a Round the World or Flexible ticket – as it was something that many travellers we came in contact with were having problems with and that is very difficult to know the realities of until you are already using the ticket.
For many who are considering these options – especially flying from Europe and North America - the Round the World or Flexible Multiple Destination tickets have become a very enticing concept. Where these tickets used to cost significantly more than a single ticket to one destination, in recent times the costs have become much more similar.
For example – when we purchased our tickets for New Zealand late in 2007, many airlines were running deals to get people to buy 'flexible' round the world tickets. Especially airlines like Qantas and Air New Zealand. For us to buy a rt ticket to New Zealand would have cost us over £700 each – and I'm not certain if that included taxes and airport fees.
For a Round the World Flexible ticket with Air New Zealand for the same dates with three stops (one in Hong Kong, one in New Zealand and one in LA – US) cost us £890. It was a very small addition with a lot of extra travel tagged on. (This also had the added bonus of being able to include Fiji in this flight plan for the meager sum of an extra £100 - something I desperately wish we had taken advantage of)
It was all too much to resist and in the end we joined the many other travellers who took this option and suddenly had ourselves a round the world journey.
On paper this sounded very good. We researched different tickets and different airlines – we bought these through a travel agent in Scotland who we were in frequent contact with through one agent. We checked the details of the flight again and again before we decided to purchase. Even being sure we got some of the information in writing from our travel agent – we felt pretty confident when we purchased our RTW ticket with Air New Zealand.
We'd heard good things about Air New Zealand– and on our first flight and stop to Hong Kong we could make no complaints. And over our time in New Zealand I flew with Air New Zealand a lot – and as airlines these days go, they rank pretty well. Their phone line customer service was always pretty good and most things can be done pretty simply on line. As I mentioned in the 'Airports and Airlines' review – they have had a tendency recently to raise their prices and their fees and baggage allowances have gotten absurd, but that seems to be the case with virtually every airline left.
However, after arriving in New Zealand and being there a few weeks we started hearing more and more worrying complaints from other working holiday makers on flexible tickets. It started with one group from Germany who were extremely upset that their 'flexible' ticket, was anything but. Like us they had purchased a ticket that supposedly you could change the date on as many times as you wanted, for free, up to 48 hours before hand. The only stipulation that had been put forth at any point by the airline or our travel agent was that it was dependent on there being seats available on the day you wanted to fly. A very reasonable stipulation – we thought. With a small £25 handling fee to change the date – again, something we thought reasonable.
The German boys – deciding to get home in time for summer in Europe – were told that actually for them to change their date would cost them over $300, an amount they didn't have, leaving them stuck with out work in New Zealand.
As you can imagine, they were less than pleased – and I began to get quite nervous about our ticket. While they were talking, another girl from Switzerland came over to join in the conversation saying she had just had exactly the same experience with another airline.
She had worked as much as she was allowed in New Zealand and when she went to change her ticket it was going to cost her $600. The fee was so much that it worked out better for her to purchase a working holiday visa for Australia and fly there instead while waiting for her original flight home from New Zealand.
We started hearing this again and again – so we wrote to our travel agent again to make certain that all was as we were told it was.
Again we were assured there would be no problem.
It is important to mention here that when you buy a Round the World Ticket – you can only book for 6 months in advance. Therefore, to get the full year you must change your dates at least once.
Pretty soon after we arrived in New Zealand it became apparent that the wages we earned vs the cost of living was going to be difficult for a year, so when it came time to move our dates a few months later we decided to leave in December for the States instead of February – and this is where the problems began.
When we called Air New Zealand – there were NO DATES we could change it to. There was nothing from December to April that we could change it to for free.
What they don't explain when you buy these tickets is that 'subject to availability' doesn't refer to available seats on the flight – but rather the pre-set prices for selected seats on certain dates. Another words - the price bracket they set for their pricing month to month. Because of the sales they had been running when we purchases there were about three weeks during when we booked our tickets that fell into the seating price category we had. Everything after that rose in price signifcantly.
It wasn't as if there was only a few scattered days each month to choose from, or we waited too long to book the tickets we wanted, or tried to purchase in busy flight times – there were NO dates from December to April in which we could change for free. (and this we began trying to arrange in May)
It soon became apparent that the situation was different than we were led to believe - though entirely by our travel agent or by Air New Zealand it was hard to tell. The change fee was actually $75 per person, and for any of the seats that were available it was going to cost us around $300 each to change.
When we contacted our travel agent about this she refused to be of any service and only repeated that once we were out of the country we had to deal with Air New Zealand – that they had no more to do with the ticketing process.
In the end we found one date – 12 days after our original leaving date – that we could change our tickets to for $100 each. However it was about two months of hassle and trying to communicate between New Zealand Air and our travel agent. And luckily we were quite flexible about this. Had we wanted to change it to March or April as we originally wanted, then the price would have been significantly higher.
I'm not certain about how this works with other airlines – only that I heard complaints of exactly the same thing with Qantas and two other airlines I'm not familiar with.
If you don't want the 'flexibility' aspect of your ticket – or don't mind paying a bit extra for it – then the RTW ticket can still be an excellent value. But be very careful about what you purchase if changing the date for free or for a small fee is something that will be important in your travels.