Air New Zealand
Reviews and Complaints

My recent experience with Air New Zealand left me disappointed. It seems they prioritize cost-saving measures over customer satisfaction, as they will try to switch you to a cheaper flight whenever they can. I experienced this firsthand and had no choice if I wanted to get back home. Additionally, the treatment I received from their staff was almost discriminatory, which further soured the experience. Their customer service did not offer any satisfactory resolution. I suggest avoiding Air New Zealand and considering other airlines like Qantas or Jetstar.

Good morning

We'd had a lovely few days in Queenstown until driving home on the Southern motorway on 15.11.2023 at 1.30pm we saw a female Air New Zealand staff member in full purple and black uniform driving whilst holding her mobile phone in her left hand inches from her mouth. She was driving a silver/grey Mazda Verissa (at speed) registration number LFU496 and turned off at exit 461 to Pukekohe.

I am always horrified to see self entitled drivers on their phone, who assume the law does not apply to them. However, had she caused an accident resulting in injury or worse to herself or others she would have been a headline in the news for being an Air New Zealand worker that breaks he law. She is not a good representative for the company.

06/10/23

nz124 MEL/AKL

LATE ARRIVAL:

FAILURE TO HOLD CONNECTION ONWARD AIR NEW ZEALAND FLIGHT 902 FOR AT LEAST 11 Pax . FALSE ADVICE ON BOARD TO RUN TO GATE, AS AIRPORT HAD CLOSED GATE DESPITE NZ902 ALSO DELAYED. Nz902 AIRCRAFT WAS STILL AT GATE FOR 20 MINUTES - DISRUPTION COULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDED.

Next availability 48 hours wait -

Air New Zealand offer to fly to LAX was unacceptable due to visa requirements

I boarded flight nz173, on sat 12 aug 23, this was operated by wamos, taking up my seat 7c, when I noticed the screen I was allocated had wire sticking out of it where the head phones go. I brought this to the stewards attention. He initially moved me to the spare seat behind 7c. The steward had a look and then advised me that the screen was unusable a fact I already knew.

Rather than move me to the spare seat the steward advised me I had to stay in my allocated seat. I spent the rest of the flight with no screen.

My complaint is that I paid for the works which included video access and I never got it.

I'm due to fly back from Australia at end of this month and I'd like a part refund that I can put towards my flight ticket

I'm not sure what else is required

My contact number

Nz is [protected]

Aust is 04 [protected]

Would appreciate someone contacting me thanks

Rob Powell

An Air New Zealand flight from Christchurch to Auckland on 24/12/2021 was cancelled due to COVID-19 restrictions. Booking reference BZNSBH (AUD$138.47). A credit was obtained with a due date 31/12/2023. I have been unable to use this credit, as AirNZ is no longer flying to my home country Argentina. I requested a refund on 8th august, 2023 and it was denied due to the ticket being "non-refundable". I spoke to Amed (who did not want to disclose his last name and was unable to give me the name of his supervisor) and he told me I was not eligible for a refund, although in Air NZ website the following is the criteria for a refund:

Eligibility

Fares are only refundable under the following criteria:

It was specified in the original conditions of your fare, or

Local legislation requires a refund when a flight is cancelled by the operating airline, or

Your booking with us is cancelled or delayed due to reasons within Air New Zealand's control, and it meets the criteria outlined in the Conditions of carriage, or

The request qualifies for the Air New Zealand COVID-19 compassionate refund policy.

My case falls under all of these criteria except for the original conditions of the fare.

About 1 hour before the supposed 9:40 take off, I received notice that the flight to New Plymouth via Wellington had been cancelled.

Because of your cancelled flight you put me on a Qantas flight at 10:10 to New Plymouth via Auckland. This flight was delayed for 4 hours causing me to miss my connection to Wellinton & New Plymouth, costing me the loss of a hotel booking in New Plymouth for the evening of the 27th of May 2023.

I had to find alternative accommodation for that night in Auckland, at a cost to me of $264 nz.

My son arrived on a flight from Singapore into Auckland (SQ319) on Wednesday, then transferring on to Wellington. Times were tight and his bag did not arrive but he was told his bag would arrive that evening and either be in Wellington that day or the next and delivered to our address. 52 hrs later no update, no bag and he has now been on hold to your baggage service for over an hour and a half - extremely poor customer service to say the least.

Baggage code AKLNZ18324, identified on your website as black and soft when in fact it is a white hardcase bag. We know due to air tags this is in Auckland and from bio security it has been checked - please explain why not tranferred to Wellington - what is he supposed to do without clothes etc - your $100 will not go far!

I just booked return Auckland - LA flights through your website. I attempted to pay through my online banking, but was unable to successfully answer the security questions in 3 attempts as your website made it impossible. I know the answers to my security questions by heart, and use them every day. I was forced to pay by debit card, which you then charged me an extra $90 to do. On top of that, I was then locked out of my online banking, and had to call my bank to sort it out! I consider this to be very unfair, and hope that Air NZ will reimburse me the extra debit card charge. And please sort out your online payment section. I feel ripped off.

Flight LAX to AKL on Air NZ 3 seat 10B was business class. Left LAX Jan. 25 (Wed) arrived AKL Jan 27 (Fri). Long flight and lost a day. Seats were to recline mine was broken I sat up the entire flight, at age 90 it was uncomfortable. Flight attendant suggested I write you. I feel compensation should be made for my inconvenience.

Barbara Ann King

P.O. Box 655

La Pine, OR [protected]

[protected]@msn.com

Hi Air New Zealand

We were due to flight to Auckland Flight NZ188 on the Saturday 28th January, however due to flooding in Auckland we were cancelled.

While we fully understand the situation, we tried to utilise the 'manage my booking' via the app and the email Air New Zealand sent on the 29th January.

Both of these did not work - as we were not able to get any one to pick up when we call ANZ, we tried to visit Flight Centre for some assistance they were not able to help us either.

We have tried to contact you via phone using all of these numbers [protected] and [protected], [protected], [protected] as we needed our flight rebooking as we needed to get to Auckland for work and my daughter is due back at school.

And these did not work either! We recieved an email saying in 48hrs notice then we got nothing, then we recieved another email saying 72 hours notice for another flight.

Due to fact we need to get back to NZ by Saturday and we were watching the direct flight filling up and disappearing before our eyes.

As of this morning we have since re booked for Friday 3rd February on the direct flight Gold Coast to Auckland Flight NZ188 10.45am due to the fact we need to get back to Auckland.

Now we have recieved an email stating you have put us on a Quantas flight QF1725/NZ7335 - on Wednesday and this is not even a direct flight?

We have tried once again to use the manage my booking - still does not work

You will need to cancel these Wednesday flights as we are now going out on Friday morning and will be requiring accommodation down at Coolangatta on Thursday night as per email for compensation.

Hope to hear back from you ASAP by the morning!

My email is: [protected]@gmail.com

My phone number [protected]

Kind Regards

Nelson

We were to fly on the 28th of January on the direct flight from New York to Auckland. We were informed by Air NZ on Friday evening that our flight was cancelled. Since then we have been ringing the air nz call centre number, phones have not been answered for over 6 hours at times. Then the line is automatically cut. In the mean time we cannot even use the manage my booking as the option to book is not available. we cannot get a refund to book on another line. It is Saturday Night and other than sleeping for a few hours even this my husband and I took turns to sleep in case we missed the chance to answer the phone while we listened to the same music over and over again. What a shamble. Air NZ should be ashamed to be called a national carrier. This service is worse than Jet Star, and that is saying someting.

I have had to come to NZ to get my new work visas into the US embassy which takes 4 weeks. I am a reserch Scientist. So now my return flights need to be moved, because I will now be late in getting into NZ. Do you not understand the repercussions? possible "NO", but note that people have lives to live. Should you not have more staff on your call centre to cope with the issues that came about due to the bad weather and closer of the Auckland airport.

We cannot get a full refund, so that we can book on a different air line. Who is looking after the customer Air NZ?

Crystal James and Troy Gullery our email address is csjames.[protected]@gmail.com and [protected]@gmail.com.

I was interested in changing one flight in a return booking I had purchased to New York later in the year. The ticket didnt have details of how much this would cost me or even whether I could change this date and it informed me to contact Air NZ customer support. I was on hold for 4.75 hours. Who would consider this treatment of their customers as acceptable?

Date: 16th January 2023

Time: 2pm-6:45

I finally spoke with Kushla who was brilliant in sorting out my question and predicament. However I believe a complaint needs to lodged to better the custoemr service response time.

Your website doesn't enable to cancel a flight online and get credit for a future flight. I have been stuck on hold for 2 hours. There is more than 1 flight being cancelled but that should not impact anything. My confirmation # is U6UCBH. There needs to be more agents working; nobody should be on hold for this long. Ticket #[protected]. Total charged 253.00

Today I missed check-in time because I was in a que directly in front of the Air NZ counters but it turned out that the que was for another airlines flight. However, the only que available was to the Premium Economy/Service desk which if I had used, would have enabled me to check-in and make my flight. I arrived at the check-in que at 11:20 for the 12:30 flight (NZ198) but was in a very slow-moving que for over 30 minutes. By the time I got close enough to the counter to question whether the que was the correct one, it seems that the flight check-in had closed.

I explained all this to the person at the service desk but she said there was nothing that could be done.

I have re-booked a flight for Tuesday (XVY8FH) but due to what I consider was incorrect signage on the check-in que, I have lost the cost of my airfare (NZ$523) and have also lost on accommodation and work arrangements (it is a business trip and I regularly travel). This is the first time it has ever happened to me with 1.25M miles of air travel over 30 years of flying..

Booking Reference, Air New Zealand 3KHF6H.

I am turning 80 in a matter of days!

I have NEVER in all my traveling days, seen such chaos as at the NZ counter Melbourne Airport 02/12/2022 for flight NZ 124.

It was unclear to me which check-in queue my Kenyan/Canadian friend should be in. I found the overhead boards unclear. It wasn't just us who were confused, it was passengers all around.

The saving grace was "floating" NZ staff who were trying to help passengers. Finally two such staff assisted us, but it still took them about 20-30miutes to provided 2 of the 3 needed Boarding Passes.

Although my friend's ticket was fully confirmed, there was a delay to check -in her Kenyan Passport and Canadian Residential Status.

And WHY couldn't A NZ issue a Boarding Pass for the 3rd leg of her journey and connecting flight, on Air Canada?

I've never come across this problem before in all my flying world travels? Ofcourse there is Customs clearance in Vancouver but that shouldn't be the reason for NO boarding Pass.

With the demise of QANTAS I hoped Air New Zealand was still a good company to deal with and provide good service.

Lyn McDonald

Today 25/11/22 at 1-30 pm after waiting for well over half an hour I had a young male answer my ph call, when I requested info on unaccompanied children,

He didnt listen to the questions,

Kept getting the destinations mixed up,

I asked, if I could fly my grandies from sydney to auckland, the price, and them for me to accompany them back to oz, me stay for 3-4 days then come home, when I said that he wasnt actually listening he disconected the call,

Very rude! Do I really want to fly with a company that treats me like I dont exist?

Kath

24/11/22 17:35

1) the AirNZ website contains next to no useful information regarding an ESTA visa whilst transiting through the US to another destination (which is what transit means btw, the US is not my destination, as the website states), and certainly does not give this crucial information relating to a booked flight. As a result of this misinformation, I had to wait for two hours at Heathrow for an ESTA visa to be approved and missed my flight home to New Zealand by 10mins.

2) The phone line is a joke. Customers are put on hold for hours listening to Crowded House repeats?! Do they think we are in the 90's trying to book tickets to a footy match? During these torturous few hours, there were no updates regarding queues and no apologies. What kind of so-called customer service is this?! it is incredibly rude and dishonest of this Doug Grant to say that his airline is dealing with challenges relating to the pandemic. It clearly is not and makes no apology for being grossly incompetent. AirNZ, get your s*t sorted!

My name is Satya Maharaj accompanied by my wife Chandra Maharaj we travelled from Sydney on 9th November 2022 on Flight No NZ106.

Our tickets were Works Deluxe which included a confirmed empty seat however this did not happen.

We were allocated seat 42D and 42E with 42F occupied by another passenger.

During food service our Boarding passes where checked twice before any food was served to us which was very embarrassing to say the least as our tickets where Works Deluxe.

We were very disappointed with the meal options which was a mice beef pie and a vegetarian pasta dish.Being Hindus we do not eat beef so had to opt for the Pasta which we found totally unacceptable.

We have never requested a special meal as there is always chicken,lamb or seafood as a second option if beef is the other option.I fail to understand why a vegetarian dish was the second option as anyone requiring it would have requested a special meal.

When the crew saw that we had not eaten our meals at all they kindly served crackers and dips but I personally found this to be unacceptable.

The Booking Reference for this flight is ITIIUH and my Airpoints no is 76676.

I am attaching a photo of the Pasta Meal for your information.In economy I do not expect a gourmet meal but I am sure Air NZ can do much better.

I leave to Air New Zealand for any appropriate compensation.

Thanks and regards,

Satya Maharaj