United has blown it with a decimal point — San Francisco or Los Angeles to Auckland, New Zealand was supposed to be $10,620+tax for full fare business but got published (fare basis CNZ) as $1062+tax or about $1480 all-in.
The fare works to Christchurch, New Zealand as well.
This is available at Orbitz, Expedia, United.com, and some other places.
You have to fly LA or San Francisco to Sydney on United and then any carrier (Air New Zealand, Qantas, Emirates, Thai, LAN) on to Auckland (for the Auckland fare).
It doesn’t appear to allow stopovers in Sydney — just connections. While the fare says ‘unlimited stopovers’ it is apparently a mileage-based fare, so stopovers cause a “HIP check” aka a check for the highest fare to any stopover and causes the price to jump accordingly (a stopover in Sydney prices the fare at the more expensive Sydney business class roundtrip price).
It’s full fare business class, fully refundable (and in theory changeable, but that may require exchanging for the then-current higher fare). Of course, when searching for this fare you need to specify business class!
Available through the end of the schedule (return flights available up to 330 days from now).
Naturally, UPGRADEABLE TO FIRST with miles (30,000 each way) or systemwide upgrades.
This fare looks to be on the way out, won’t be around much longer, and in truth has been around for at least a day and a half. I learned about it over a day ago and shared it with some people directly, but had to commit to the person passing it along that I wouldn’t post anything about it. (Sorry, folks!) But now it’s been posted on Flyertalk so I feel free to share it here as well.
Since your criteria for posting was that it was posted at flyertalk first (as in it had gone public), I think you could have posted it here considerably earlier. One of the reasons I have you on my RSS is so I don’t have to check the mile-run forum twice a day. I guess I’ll go back to my old routine.
Sorry — this one was unique in that the fare had been shared with me on the condition that I not post it. So I honored that request, until it was also posted on Flyertalk. Very shortly after it went up there, I posted here. Not my usual practice.
Fortunately (amazingly!) the fare was still available for about 20 hours after my posting!
Please. Like it’s your responsibility to inform the public. It would be one thing if jam paid to access your blog. But it’s your blog, and you have the right to write whatever you want, when you want.