NZ | Airports + Aviation News

[metroman]

In regards to stewardesses I think Qantas are the best I have seen. The khaki of Virgin is a little drab. Air New Zealand did win an award recently for being the second best longhaul airline after Virgin, so they can't be too bad.

[Svartmetall]

Originally Posted by Davee

Ryan Air - VOMIT BUS.

Agreed, they're like my old friends EasyJet - cheap but awful. Mind you, my flight from London to Paris was actually cheaper by flying Air France than flying Easyjet - plus I got to use Heathrow and CDG which was much better for transit links than flying from Luton.

Originally Posted by Davee

Thank God we're not using T5

Teething problems! I've been watching the news and nearly every single new airport has major problems in its first year of operation. I still can't wait to use it myself.

[jarbury]

I would guess that London-Paris is quickest via the Eurostar. I have a few low-cost flights booked for my European holiday, hopefully they're not TOO crap.

Easyjet from Paris - Barcelona
Clickair (Iberia subsidiary) from Barcelona - Naples
Ryan Air (probably) from Venic - London

Otherwise it's all trains for me. Looking forward to bursting out of the chunnel in France and having the train crank it up to 300 kph.

[metroman]

The new terminal in Beijing which is at least twice the size don't appear to be having the same problems as Heathrow.

[metroman]

It is the largest terminal in the world which can fit up to 5 Heathrow terminals.

[Svartmetall]

Originally Posted by metroman

The new terminal in Beijing which is at least twice the size don't appear to be having the same problems as Heathrow.

Denver, Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok all had problems with their new airports and those problems were much more severe in nature than Terminal 5. Considering Heathrow is one of the worlds busiest airports already with one of the tightest schedules of any airport around the world I don't think it's doing badly at all. Name another airport with that many take-offs and landings with only two runways.

Also, it has only just opened so give it time Mr Nay-sayer and they're pretty minor problems anyway.

Gotta love China though - Communist labour, suppression of the masses and mass evictions and land appropriation by force gets the job done I guess in many cases. Doesn't matter that money is being misappropriated into projects like this when millions of people live below the poverty line. I'm glad at least one World Leader has made a statement to boycott this years olympics, I know I for one will be too.

[MonsieurAquilone]

Pass. Getting politics to enter the Olympics (yet again) will be the death of it. What a waste.

[metroman]

Media do tend to exagerate problems a bit. I agree on boycotting the Olympics. Because so many athletes are on lucrative contracts, it isn't likely that many people will boycott the games. If ever there was a case to boycott it is certainly applicable over Tibet.

[Milan Luka]

I think I agree with you re Tibet there metroman. I have to be honest though and say I dont really know much about the situation. Tibet seems to be a poster child cause for feral hippy types.

And back on topic, really want to see the new Beijing terminal. Potentially may never do so as China aint never been high on my list of countries to visit. Be interesting to see T5 just to see what London can do in regards to a modern airport terminal. Once they have settled in. The last couple of years Ive dealt with Heathrow after longhaul flights, this year though I have decided enough. Looks like I'll be using Schipol, used it once in about '97 and was impressed. Looking forward to doing it again.

[Svartmetall]

Originally Posted by Milan Luka

I think I agree with you re Tibet there metroman. I have to be honest though and say I dont really know much about the situation. Tibet seems to be a poster child cause for feral hippy types.

And back on topic, really want to see the new Beijing terminal. Potentially may never do so as China aint never been high on my list of countries to visit. Be interesting to see T5 just to see what London can do in regards to a modern airport terminal. Once they have settled in. The last couple of years Ive dealt with Heathrow after longhaul flights, this year though I have decided enough. Looks like I'll be using Schipol, used it once in about '97 and was impressed. Looking forward to doing it again.

Schipol and Frankfurt International are consistantly voted as two of the best European airports. Both of them act as major hubs in Europe so I'd recommend either based upon ringing endorsements that I have heard from other travellers.

Everyone is saying that T5 is a really nice looker - they're just moaning about the functionality due to teething problems at the moment. In saying all of this, in all of my time travelling I've never had a problem with Heathrow. My favourite airport in the UK is London City, though. Gatwick is okay, Stansted I never used and Luton is an awful shed in the middle of nowhere with no amenities.

[Davee]

Had dinner with one of the contracted builders for t5 on Saturday. He said the place is amazing and everything in it is state of the art. The problem is the people. Only 10 of the baggage handlers had full and proper training. The technology was beyond half their mental capabilities

[Kiwi_Rich]

Taking things back a few posts but I have to say that BA is truly awful!

The staff are really helpful and friendly 9 times out of 10 but they give the impression they couldn't navigate their way out of a paper bag!

In the past 8 months I have taken aruond 40 flights with BA on business/pleasure/smuggling cigars and I just did some quick sums and found that about 83% of my flights have been delayed.

The most recent example was on departure at Schipol when we were literally powering down the runway only for the engines power right back and the plane to roll off on to the taxi-way because 'the flight computer (calculates fuel remaining and a host of other stuff) died' we began our long taxi back to the terminal (literally 5 miles - I've heard it's the longest in the world!) which took just over 20 minutes. Then sat on the plane at the terminal for 4 hours hearing encouraging things such as 'Now the artificial horizon has died...'

Thank god we made it back to Gatwick!

Although I think my worst experience with BA was after being delayed 5 hours on departure for Geneva we finally took off and on approach to Geneva we were travelling to fast and in the pilots own words 'had the potential to run up the backside of the aircraft in front of us' this led to the aircraft doing a 'go-around' when we were only about 50 feet from touch-down which is always an exciting experience as the passengers screaming in the cabin can attest too!

I did actually quite enjoy that one though as it was very similar to a roller coaster!

As for Airlines

I agree with Davee - Singapore is the best and Changi is great.

Last time I went back to NZ I flew AirNZ (first time ever long-haul) and I was really impressed; the crew London - Hong Kong were ALL English and were fantastic! The whole flight there and back was great; although some of the hostessess yukkkk!

[Svartmetall]

Haha! I've had nothing but good experiences with BA but Air NZ made me have a horrid welcome to this country!

I guess what we can conclude from this is that all airlines that have been singled out are shockingly bad except Emirates and Singapore which no one seems to moan about.

[Kiwi_Rich]

Agreed no-one ever gets off a Singapore Airlines flight going 'wow that was awful everything went perfectly!'

[jarbury]

I made a good choice then with Singapore Airlines for my London flights.

[KaneD]

Originally Posted by Svartmetall

Haha! I've had nothing but good experiences with BA but Air NZ made me have a horrid welcome to this country!

I guess what we can conclude from this is that all airlines that have been singled out are shockingly bad except Emirates and Singapore which no one seems to moan about.

I think it is fair to say that ALL airlines have their share of aggravated customers. Airlines are big corporates that provide services to hundreds of thousands of people. Like most big companies, they tend to get impersonal and they will often have black and white rules that will always affect someone negatively when it shouldn't if common sense was to be followed instead.

After everyone raving about Singapore for years and years, I flew on them first from London to Singapore in 2003 and was not impressed. The personal inflight entertainment system which I'd never experienced before didn't work at all in our section of the aircraft, so I didn't get ANY TV, let alone a personal one. So much for the 'best inflight entertainment system'. On the return flight, I got the TV, but the quality was rather poor and the screen flickered badly.

Otherwise the general service was in line with what one would typically expect of a flag carrier airline. But given that their inflight system was something they were 'proud to show off' I was rather disappointed overall.

AirNZ isn't free of fault either - I flew to China last year on the new plane and while the inflight system was miles ahead of Singapore's (as it should be for something much newer), it was slow as treacle to navigate around and it crashed about 7 times during the flight, each time I had to wait 10 or more minutes for it to restart. (Despite it being modern, it runs on an antiquated Windows CE operating system). I saw a number of screens with the text based startup screen.

As for other aspects, in general, I've never had any other problems 'in flight' with AirNZ as far as customer service interactions go. But I've had a few issues with Air NZ on the ground however - again, mostly a result of me wanting to do something perfectly sensible and logical and plain common sense, but didn't fit within the black and white rules that the check in staff have to go by. A couple of times, I've spoken to a supervisor that has managed to agree to my way of thinking, but in general, those people aren't around to speak with when you're trying to get on the plane leaving in 30 minutes which has 5 spare seats when your ticketed flight doesn't leave until 3 hours, and I have a non-transferrable ticket so the check in staff have to say no, I must wait 3 hours despite their being empty seats on the next plane - you get my drift. Just usual pedantic stuff.

My overall summary based on my personal experiences:

Air NZ - Excellent
Qantas - Poor
Singapore - Average
Virgin Blue - Excellent
Ansett Australia - Mediocre
Royal Tongan Airlines - Excellent
Air Pacific - Excellent
Air Berlin - Excellent
Delta Airlines - Excellent
United Airlines - Average
Icelandair - Excellent
Shanghai Airways - Excellent
Air Berlin - Excellent
EasyJet - Excellent
Ryannair - Excellent
Aer Lingus - Excellent

[UglyBob]

Pacific Blue has announced Chch Dunedin service from 1 July. No plans indicated for Invercargill or Queenstown at this time (full ODT story over in Dunedin thread).

[Milan Luka]

More jets to Dunedin. Looks lke its a daily service from Christchurch at the moment, arrival just before and leaving just after lunch. Fares at $39 one way all inclusive. Good news.

Flying in/out from other cities connections not necessarily that great, a few hours wait in Christchurch airport required.

[whooodaman]

Pacific Blue won't be swooping in any time soon to salvage Palmerston North Airport's international status.


The airport has resumed its search for an airline willing to run trans- Tasman flights, after Freedom Air's service stopped last weekend and OzJet's plan to take over was abruptly shelved.

"We have a great deal of sympathy for our friends in Palmerston North," said Pacific Blue commercial general manager Adrian Hamilton-Manns.

He spoke with Palmerston North Airport chief executive Garry Goodman on Monday about opportunities in the area. "We can't ride to the rescue in the next few weeks," Mr Hamilton-Manns said.

"Over the medium term, maybe something else can be worked out."

OzJet pulled the pin a week ago on plans to start a trans-Tasman service, just days before the first scheduled flight, citing "recent merger talks, which are nearing completion". OzJet chief executive Willie O'Neill said yesterday there was no final result yet, but the airline hoped to settle its affairs by Friday.

The prospective buyer was going through a due diligence process, "as we speak", Mr O'Neill said.

Our Airline, formerly Air Nauru, was not the prospective buyer, he said, though it was still expected to be involved.

He wouldn't comment on whether OzJet staff had lost their jobs.

OzJet owner Paul Stoddart, poised to sell the airline, couldn't be reached for comment at OzJet's Melbourne office yesterday.

The Manawatu Standard understands OzJet was to make a loss on the Palmerston North service in the first two months.

The airline had elected to launch with a reduced programme because it was slow to obtain an international air licence, delaying the start of ticket sales.

Airlines normally need a window of about 16 weeks before the first flight to hit the ground running, but OzJet allowed itself just four weeks.

The airline had nonetheless sold about 2600 tickets for Brisbane flights by March 21. Sydney ticket sales were slower.

OzJet staff also expressed confidence in the planned service about two weeks out from the first scheduled flight and staff were preparing for kick-off right up until the day OzJet declared "merger talks" had forced a rethink.

Mr Goodman wouldn't comment on whether the airport had now given up on OzJet. Pacific Blue, part of the Australian-based Virgin Blue group, moved into the New Zealand domestic market last November with cut-price flights between Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. The airline will add Dunedin to its schedules from July 1.

"Palmerston North is of huge interest to us," Mr Hamilton-Manns said.

He has previously described Freedom's withdrawal as puzzling given that its Palmerston North- Brisbane service had the highest number of passengers for New Zealand's regional cities.

[Milan Luka]

Any Aucklanders know anything about the new arrivals hall at Auckland International? I heard it opened officially today. No idea of plans or havent even seen any pictures of it. No media reports either.

Maybe I should check the Auckland threads.