NZ108
SYD-AKL
After spending NYE at the Opera house (which was awesome by the way), and enjoying the fireworks it was time for us to say our goodbyes to Australia and head for New Zealand and first to AKL, our final destination (SYD was our lucky stopover in our first US DM reservation and AKL was our destination).
So that afternoon, we went to SYS airport with a prebooked taxi from the hotel. Everything was well and we arrived in due time (take about 25 minutes).
In the Terminal we headed for Air New Zealand Premium Check in counter. Again, everything went smoothly, despite the check in lady not being in a very good mood. Sadly all attempts to lighten her up failed miserably! At least NZ has a clearly marked Business / Premium queue, which means we were out of there in no time. Our bagages were marked with a prio tag, and we also got an Express Path card to clear Australian immigration faster.
Premium Check in line
Information card... NZ is pretty strict, on things that seems quite obvious!
Boarding card, immigration form and Express Path card
Priority tag
Express Path
On our way to the Express Path way, I noticed a sign for an observation deck. Of course we had to visit that! I posted a few spotting pictures in a dedicated thread on
Flyprat.no. Plane geeks only
After our spotting experience (for the delight of my very patient girlfriend), and with only one hour ait left, we choose to visit the NZ Lounge over the SQ, as pretty much everybody recommends here on FT. We would be back anyway in a few weeks and would have a second chance.
Koru Club SYD
Air New Zealand's lounge (called Koru Club) in SYD is fairly big, ans very nice indeed. It is definitely larger than most of the lounges I have been to in Europe.
Here again there are plenty of different seating areas, ranging from (very) soft sofas, to relaxing chairs, dining tables and bar stols. The colours are quite nice, and the atmosphere in the lounge is rather good.
As in the Qantas club in MEL, the choices of newspapers is extremely limited (only 3), even though there are a few more choice of magazines.
Regarding F&B, the food spread was quite alright, with a hot meal (chicken curry), a soup, and several other hot items (spring rolls, minitarts, fried chicken, pie) and a selection of cold food (veggie salad, pasta sald, cheese, tuna sandwich) as well. Drinks choice were classical but with of course local wines and sparkling wines.
One disappointing thing though was the lack of knowledge, skills, and willingness to help form the lounge dragon and local staff. There were here for one thing and one thing only, control who comes in and make boarding annoucement.
I wanted to check a couple of things with them for my next flights on NZ. For example I wanted to make sure that our second US DM reservation was all good to go. This is something I usually do when an award ticket. From previous
experience US does not always make everything correctly, and I was bound to be right on this... Keep reading for the next few instalments... Anyway that was not possible. They said I had to go out of the airside to NZ ticket office, or call reservations. Who wants to call reservations? With no status, I have better things to do than spending 30 minutes on the phone waiting to talk with someone!
I also wanted to prebook some seats which sadly for one reservation could not be done online. They could not do that either. Normally any lounge staff whether it's with SK or LH can do small operations like this for you. Here they could not.
Signage in SYD, showing that the Koru Club from NZ is used by a bunch of airlines
Lounge entrance
Sofa seating area, not the most comfortable (too soft for me)
Chairs
Bar
Dining area
Computers
Small Business Centre
Hot dog cart, not exactly my thing but why not
Spread
Some of the drinks, decent choices
Restrooms, modern and large, also with shower rooms
Very decent apron views
Conclusion
The Koru Club SYD is a very nice lounge overall to spend time in. It's not a First Class lounge by any means (which in that case was ok, but sadly does not work so much when you fly TG F out of SYD), but it is definitely one of nicest Business lounge I've been too. The only disappointing element was the constant lack of help form NZ staff for whatever request you have. They seem to be completely locked out of the reservation system (are they outsourced maybe?) and therefore anything you need to do with a reservation must be done over the phone. That's not good enough.