Auckland to Christchurch (AKL-CHC) on Qantas 737-300
During my wait I fell for the trap for unwary flyers, in that I assumed I would be getting a 737-300 with business seats for my next flight based on the rego of the aircraft at my gate. Unfortunately I forgot that my flight would use an aircraft which is yet to arrive at Auckland, thus the other one is in fact waiting to be used for an international flight but parked up at the domestic terminal in the meantime. It later moved to a remote stand. It generally isn't too hard to work out which aircraft you will be using and where it is coming from due to the small fleet size and high utilisation, plus the 737-300 without business seats tend to not be flown trans-tasman (given the need to compensate for downgrades and in the case of a switch from 737-400 also a loss of capacity). But with Qantas aircraft substitutions are fairly common so there are no guarantees.
It isn't unusual in a day of travelling like this for me to work out where nearly all the jetconnect (QF domestic in NZ plus some trans-tasman) fleet are based on observing several of their aircraft around the country and knowledge of their schedules.
I have time for some soup and a drink before boarding, which is late. Once again the flight is full. We have extensive cloud cover until over northern Canterbury. But the sun is shining brightly on the Southern Alps and foothills, the fresh dumping of spring snow to low levels looking brilliant.
As the strong winds cross the mountains and descend to the plains, we are buffeted on approach but not as badly as in Wellington. There are fine wave cloud formations over the plains. There is a runway change as we approach so we circle around to land from another direction.
I headed into the lounge to await my next flight.
Last edited by Kiwi Flyer; Oct 7, 2007 at 2:28 pm