\u201cWhen I went up, I saw that he now had my boarding pass,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I asked them, \u2018Where am I supposed to be sitting?\u2019 they sheepishly said, \u2018Well, there\u2019s a seat that\u2019s dysfunctional and because of that, you have been downgraded\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Watkins said the airline did not explain why she was downgraded while the passenger assigned the defective seat was allowed to remain in Premium Economy.<\/p>\n
Air New Zealand general manager customer Alisha Armstrong said when a premium cabin seat could not be used, airport teams assessed factors such as fare type and booking class to determine reassignment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat process is designed to be consistent and fair,\u201d Armstrong said.<\/p>\n
However, on Watkins\u2019 flight, \u201cthere were no available seats in Business Premier, so an upgrade was not an option\u201d.<\/p>\n
Watkins was moved from seat 26D to 44H and says she received a $350 koha as an apology.<\/p>\n
Despite this, Watkins said she felt discriminated against and unfairly penalised because of an \u201coperational decision\u201d.<\/p>\n
She claimed Air New Zealand failed to honour its contract.<\/p>\n
\u201cI received a significant downgrade despite paying the correct fare,\u201d she wrote in a complaint email to the airline.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo proactive service recovery or meaningful compensation was offered.\u201d<\/p>\n
Watkins requested a refund of $550-$600, the fare difference between Premium Economy and Economy.<\/p>\n
She also sought additional compensation for \u201cstress and inconvenience\u201d, the negative impact on her holiday, and what she said was a failure to uphold the airline\u2019s brand value of manaakitanga.<\/p>\n
Air New Zealand said it had recognised the disruption and disappointment caused by the seat change through payments already made to Watkins.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhenever someone is involuntarily downgraded, they receive two forms of support under our policy: a refund of the fare difference after travel, and a separate goodwill payment at the airport to recognise the inconvenience experienced by the customer,\u201d Armstrong said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBoth of these have been arranged for Ms Watkins, and her complaint has since been escalated and resolved by our Customer Recovery team.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe apologise for the delay in getting back to her.\u201d<\/p>\n
Watkins said she waited more than three weeks for a response to her complaint and refund request.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a national carrier, they have a responsibility to provide a service that is efficacious, efficient and to be resolving issues in a timely manner,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
She said she was now reconsidering whether she will continue flying with Air New Zealand in future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWhen I went up, I saw that he now had my boarding pass,\u201d she said. \u201cWhen I asked…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189007,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1117,74,68,9526,118527,116990,219,70,71,42,118528,194,117,43,1118,14734,104282,8780,96437,118530,312,7248,51052,40,38,41,39,35967,118529,80],"class_list":["post-189006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-accused","tag-after","tag-air","tag-another","tag-downgrade","tag-downgraded","tag-economy","tag-flight","tag-from","tag-headlines","tag-holidaymaker","tag-kiwi","tag-new","tag-news","tag-of","tag-passenger","tag-penalised","tag-premium","tag-rarotonga","tag-reassigned","tag-says","tag-seat","tag-swap","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-unfair","tag-unfairly","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189006\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}