Airline tests response to air-ticket auctions

By RICHARD WOOD

Air New Zealand has quietly begun auctioning Air Points and national weekend-away flights online through a branded store on auction site trademe.co.nz.

The main offering from Air NZ is national return flights for one or two for the next weekend. Once confirmed the flights are non-changeable, non-refundable and must be paid for by credit card.

One auction due to close today had reached $300 for 5000 Air Points at midday yesterday. Another example is a return trip for one from Auckland to Queenstown with a reserve of $212.

An Air NZ spokeswoman said the store, which opened two weeks ago, was a trial. She said the response from those who had used the service had been positive, but emphasised it was a small part of the airline's ticket distribution.

The company was gauging interest in air-ticket auctions and would be assessing the trial to see where it fitted strategically, she said.

Air New Zealand has indicated previously that an online revamp of its own site also is underway.

In a Herald article on May 1, the airline claimed substantially increased interest on the web since it started offering discount prices in the past couple of months.

Also, Air NZ in December went live with a web self-service engine from Rightnow Technologies. This software aimed to reduce call-centre workloads by building web content based on customer inquiries.

Its makers claim that during one hectic time at Air NZ the software had managed in excess of 10,000 online customer queries a day.

Rightnow said Air NZ was investigating using the software more extensively and implementing live chat for specific areas such as corporate.

Rightnow also said Air NZ was planning to use its Metrics online survey tool to measure customer satisfaction.