We deplane by stairs. It is a lovely mild day with a light breeze - in fact pretty much the same weather and temperature that I'd left in Auckland.

With no bags to collect I interrupt the immigration officers from their chat. The arrivals card has a nice little map of the island on it, but you can't keep it because on the back is the customs declaration. Processed with barely a question, and I just managed to stop the officer stamping on one of my very few blank passport pages as I try to eke out a bit more life in it (still 7 years life left but it won't last the distance since we cannot add any more pages than the 48 originals).

Having some time before boarding I wander around. The small terminal is very nice - indoor and outdoor seating, some very nice gardens outside, cafe inside and lots of photos and memorabilia on display.

On coming back inside I see most departing pax have cleared security into the gate lounge. I spy a sign about departure tax so I head to the counter to check whether I needed to pay, and also complete the departures card sitting on the counter. It seems they were expecting me (probably from the immigration officer who processed me in to the island), but were unsure whether or not I needed to pay. I guess turnaround pax are rare here. So I browsed & chatted while waiting for an answer. The answer is no. For information, the departure tax is A$30 and payable at the airport.

So through security and I see boarding is mostly complete half an hour ahead of schedule. Back onboard and chat with the crew. The flight is 80% full and at least half seem to be a tour group. The pilot announces we are ready to go early and expect a fast flight back due to tailwinds with flight time of 80 minutes. However door 1L is still open and it seems we are missing one pax. I think she must have wandered off and caught unawares by the early boarding. Fifteen minutes later she comes onboard and we are ready to go.

As with the flight in, we circle the island at low altitude - but this time clockwise. Then it is off across the ocean. We are short one meal and I let the FA know I don't need to eat. It is a lunch choice of chicken salad or salmon salad. Plus full drink service (wines, beers, spirits etc).

No view of Northland due to the cloud cover. We finally see the land close to the Waitakere Ranges and Manukau Harbour. A short approach and we are down 30 minutes ahead of schedule. At this busy time of day we get a bus gate. However it seems we arrived too early and there is a 5 minute wait for the stairs and buses to arrive.

I walk quickly down the pier - seeing lots of pax streaming out the other gates I expect big queues at immigration and quarantine, but surprised there is no queue at the upstairs Australia and NZ lanes. So I use them, quickly processed and down the escalator where I see the downstairs lanes are very full. I don't understand why some people skip an obviously short line upstairs to queue up at a much longer one downstairs.

I managed to get the only xray machine without a queue and so bus gate to exit time was about 3 minutes. Not bad at all.