First world problem alert. We’d arrived so early into Auckland the lounge wasn’t open. Instead we went duty free shopping!
Eventually, after 45 torturous minutes the lounge opened
The new(ish) international Koru Club is really nice. Seating for miles
Good food selection, good bar (more bubbles was of course consumed), a barista (you can order through the Air NZ app on your phone), lots of power points and best of all for the nerdy plane watcher that I am a great view across the gates and runway.
In hindsight, maybe we should have asked if we could have flown home earlier, but why waste that money we’d paid to fly business to fly the last leg in economy. Instead it was nearly six hours between landing at Auckland and taking off for Brisbane on the last flight of our holiday.
After the high of the flight from Buenos Aires, our flight home to Brisbane was a bit of a letdown. From the moment we boarded it was obvious that the plane and crew didn’t come from Air New Zealand’s a-team. The crew just went through the motions. They were friendly enough, but they didn’t compare to the crew from BA, or even the premium economy crew we’d had from Auckland to BA.
We were in 3 and 4K for this flight.
IFE. Slightly bigger screen on 773 than 772 apparently. I didn't notice to be honest.
The plane itself was dirty and tired. There were lolly wrappers behind my tv screen when I opened it. More on the ground beside my seat. Everything seemed to have a layer of dust on it. It was weird to be honest.
Not that we needed anything to eat but third breakfast should have been refused. It was very ordinary.
The fruit and yoghurt with yoghurt out of a tub
and a very crisp breakfast bagel
Immigration at Brisbane was chaos. Earlier in the morning Brisbane had been closed due to fog. When we arrived, all of the planes that had been waiting had just landed. Then the passenger manifest from our plane had to be reloaded so the SmartGates failed. It took for bloody ever. Because we’d been to Peru we needed to show our yellow fever certificates but of course we’d left them at home. So we had to see a supervisor who just told us to go to the doctor if we got sick. Um, ok.
No idea if the priority tags had our bags come out at the front of the line. They'd been there close to an hour when we finally took them off the carousel.
The airport god finally smiled at us when the customs guy waved us through without a search. We appeared to definitely be in the minority.
And with that little blessing we walked out of the terminal and stepped back in to the real world.