Came back on Monday on NZ124 and lines were back past luggage carousels - certainly a poor experience for those visiting the country for the first time and a frustrating one for those of us who wanted to get home.

If you don't like the narrow seats, pay more. You get what you paid for!

Same thing last summer, AKL just keeps on taking more booking for slots that don't have gates!

5% of flights

http://i.stuff.co.nz/business/85554701/auckland-international-airport-says-buses-part-of-every-great-airport

Great! got love the "Auckland International Airport says buses part of every great airport" line.

Trying to think of how many other great airports handle bus ops as bad as AKL, every other airport I've used buses its been quick and fast, AKL in the other hand...

YES!! It's so annoying.

I've had one really bad bus from gate to plane experience. Heathrow of course. There is something about inter terminal buses (Heathrow and Sydney for example) that I dislike. Usually the cumulative stress of other passengers on tight, or not so tight, connections plus I would usualy rather walk a transfer and stretch my legs.

There are two problems that can be fixed concurrently: bus gates for widebody flights and arrivals congestion. Why NZ continues to schedule up to 5 international wide body flights arriving in the same early morning baffles me. Having to bus to the terminal after a 13 hour IAH AKL flight is very very annoying. Then the baggage claim area is chaotic and the queues hideous.

Quite likely to enable them to be used on TT flights during the day to increase their utilisation.

and to maximise connections in both USA and at AKL (NZ domestic plus trans-Tasman)

It costs a lot to have a plane parked at the tarmac, the likely scheduling minimises the arrangements by utilising the planes for TT , plus kiwis think it is acceptable to depart between 2300 hours and past midnight for long haul. Which could be fine, if you are not on Y class and arrive fresh and get to complete a business day prior to heading to the airport. NZ also doesn't have a day + night schedule on NZ metal/non codeshare on all routes.

Parking on the tarmac isn't the issue per se. The aircraft are generally parked up for hours at airports in USA, EZE, etc.

I had never had the bus experience at AKL until a few months ago, and I have to agree it was handled incredibly badly. It seems that there is only room for one bus to be loading and unloading at once, and it took an absolute age. Thankfully we were on a loooong connection and it was only an irritation rather than threatening our travel plans, but I would have been *very* unhappy if an on-time arrival turned into a missed connection thanks to poorly designed bus handling and queues at immigration/MAF.

Doed the current Auckland Airport expantion include any new international gates?

Last I heard it was adding 1 per year to peir B