Air New Zealand International Lounge, Auckland

We arrived at Auckland Airport to find the usual amount of well-marked signage for Singapore Airlines.




There was no line for Suites check-in, though we did have to wait for one person already at the counter in front of us to finish. A minute later, we were checked in with boarding passes to Singapore and our bags were checked.

This person looks happy to be using the free wifi but also appears to have no legs.



Anyway, up the stairs through the automated passport gates (quick!) and security (somewhat quick!) and into—wait for it—the duty-free mall that every international departures area has these days.



Between the duty-free mall and the not-so-duty-free mall is the narrow passageway that eventually leads to the Air New Zealand lounge. This lounge is almost identical to the one we visited in Sydney.







It’s sizable, too, with ten different seating areas.



We eventually settled on sitting on the “outdoor” deck separated from the rest of the lounge with doors and with a roof that opens up on nice days. It was not open this day, though.





There’s also a VIP section. Evidently Suites Class isn’t enough to get one in.



There was a nice light lunch spread out at the buffet.






Beverage selections were identical to what we found in Sydney: soft drinks, beer, wine, juice, water, and coffee machines. Most of the wine was from New Zealand, as one might expect.








The bar had about the same selection plus a couple of beers on tap.




The bartender, of course, had no takers for alcohol but instead was busy in full barista mode preparing coffees nonstop.



Not much of a view, though from our side of the lounge we could look out over the domestic terminal.



We enjoyed a couple of beverages and passed the hour and a half before our flight getting some work done to ease our transition back into real life.

The review

I could copy and paste what I wrote about the lounge in Sydney: “Air New Zealand has some very nice lounges. There’s no personal service or restaurant-style dining like you might find in a first class lounge but for a business-class lounge, this one left nothing to be desired. At least at breakfast time.”

The larger version has plenty of space even for the significant passenger numbers coming through. Nothing to show up early for, but still a perfectly nice lounge. You’d think some of the legacy airlines in the US, with much higher cost structures and profit margins, could pull off something like this, but I’ve never seen it.