A QUICK SIDE TRIP THAT ISN'T AS QUICK AS PLANNED
Some weeks ago I had the bright idea that since I had several hours to spare, and was going to be at the airport anyway, I could do a side trip to earn some points and status credits. Now, it doesn't seem like such a great idea as I'm a bit frazzled and seriously short on time. Oh well.
On arriving at Auckland I walked through to the Qantas end of the now partly integrated domestic terminal. I'm quickly checked in and catch up on some work while waiting for the flight down to Wellington (on 737-300). I notice the seat I usually get still hasn't been fixed (it has been broken for several months) - it still auto-reclines. Very annoying for both me and the passenger in behind.
The flight is uneventful, other than leaving slightly early and arriving slightly early is normal. I head for the lounge for a bite to eat, a drink, and to catch up on FT. Hmmm my flight hasn't been called yet and close to what I thought was the departure time. Grrr it seems the schedule changed after I'd booked and, unusually for Qantas, they hadn't notified me of the flight running 30 minutes later. Fortunately I'm not being met after the flight so nothing more than an annoyance.
The aircraft is late arriving and so there is a further delay. Optimistically an announcement is made when the aircraft arrived that boarding will be in 10 minutes. Yeah right. In my experience, even when they are trying to turn around fast to recover time when they are running late they cannot do so and sometimes lose even more time. Sure enough boarding started 20 minutes later. I slowly made my way to the gate and was last to have BP scanned, but still a queue in the airbridge so I wasn't holding anything up.
On board I notice I was in a row of 3 and politely requested to move to a row a couple back that only had 1 passenger in it. The flight was in darkness, not helped by the reading light being hopeless for illuminating on the aisle seats. I tried to doze. We arrived an hour later than I'd booked - unfortunately about par for the course with QF in NZ.