SOUTH continued

Due to the late arrival, my comfortable connection became a short one, indeed the aircraft for the onward flight was already parked up at the gate. However I just had enough time for a quick visit to the lounge for a shower to freshen up (note the NRT SKL has no shower). Same drill as before, but this time I rush rather than dawdle. Make it to the next gate as they are boarding - perfect timing.

I managed to schedule in the one SQ daily 747 service between SIN and BKK, so a sky suite for this short flight. After the excesses of the previous flight I just dozed as best I could.

Back in Singapore a couple of hours later and it was back to the lounge to pick up my last boarding pass. Then hop online and see that ciotog was in the Raffles side so I invite him to join me on the First side. By coincidence we were on the same flight down to Auckland.

We head to the gate slightly early. For a nice change I dont set off the WTMD - the SIN ones are usually set too sensitive and even something as minor as a small metal badge on my passport cover is enough to set them off. This one must be set to lesser sensitivity. They used to do passport check at the entrance to the gate lounge, but this lead to queues snaking down the corridor. So in the past several months they moved the passport check to inside the gate lounge between screening and the boarding pass read/gate agent desk. However they are much slower at checking than the other parts of the process, and so a melee forms that fills the limited available space between WTMD and the passport checkers. I think the process needs changing again as it is not working well.

Anyway, by the time clear that boarding is already well progressed and onto the second batch of economy pax. This is unusual for the SQ flights to NZ since boarding usually starts quite late due to the requirements to forward passenger details to NZ immigration. The flight is full and they are eager to get away on time.

Flight time down to Auckland is longer than usual thanks to an unusual routing. We head more easterly than normal to avoid Java and the volcano that is threatening to erupt, then turn sharply south to cross the Australian coast over the Kimberleys, to avoid severe cyclone Monica (winds up to 360kmh) which is just to the east of Darwin. We cross the eastern coast by Sydney, further south than usual.

As I'm feeling more than a little tired I sleep as much as I can on the flight, and wake just as we approach New Zealand. Auckland is having thundery showers, so the low circle over the city to land from the east is quite bumpy. We land quite late but surprisingly immigration queues are small. The baggage claim area however is busy with the various asian flights having arrived in the past hour, and so I'm glad to scoot straight past. Customs and agriculture x-rays have a small queue at each but I'm through reasonably fast - a plane to exit time of 15 minutes.