Continued.

The lounge fills up, but mostly with passengers taking the more usual route to Auckland. The flight is called. On boarding I see why I was allocated such an odd seat - for balance reasons. There are only about a dozen (or less) passengers onboard.

With the skies now dark there is no view to speak of, just passing lights of various towns and cities below. We left Napier early and thus arrived in Christchurch slightly early even with the headwinds.