THE FIRST LONG HAUL FLIGHT WITH AIR NEW ZEALAND, AND THE L.A.X. EXPERIENCE
Planning for a ten plus hour flight is a little like planning for a long sleep on a hard semi upright bed you have never slept on before, in a house you have never visited with over 300 people sharing the same environment. It doesn’t sound daunting at all – how could that possibly be uncomfortable?
Our first two experiences were actually not as horrific as the preceding paragraph may have implied. Luckily our very first long haul flight from Auckland to Los Angeles was with Air New Zealand, who pride themselves on friendly customer service and having some extras that are arguably just that little bit nicer and better thought out than many other airlines. We also decided to pay a little extra and have a ‘skycouch’, which in simple terms means you get a row of three seats where you can also raise the footrests to the same level of the seats, lay a thin mattress on, and have a nap with some also provided pillows and blankets. Although having two people try and lay on the couch at the same time is very snug, it can be achieved. Though I would suggest if it is two larger people, they may be more than snug and require some pulleys and levers to extract them back off the skycouch, and keep in mind they may have become somewhat merged into one even larger person and need some surgical intervention to ‘unmerge’ them.
Sleep on long haul flights is a challenge, or at least it was for me. I found a sort of slightly zombie-like semi-conscious state was the best that I could achieve, and despite being in this state of mind I did not attempt to eat the other passengers. This lack of desire to indulge in a cannibalistic menu was also helped by the pretty tasty and filling food that was supplied as part of the flight cost by air New Zealand. The first of the two meals were served at around an hour into the flight, and was gratefully received, consumed, and digested. The last meal, breakfast, was served about 9 hours later and within two hours of coming in to land in Los Angeles. The meals on Air New Zealand were definitely the best we had out of the four different airlines we used on our holidays.
We rate Air New Zealand 9 out of 10 Kiwis
Our flight from Auckland landed at the Tom Bradley International terminal (TBIT) in Los Angeles, also known as terminal B. The TBIT opened in 1984 and is named after LA’s longest serving and first African American mayor – yes, Tom Bradley. The TBIT has 40 gates and serves over 45 different airlines including Air New Zealand. The Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) in total has over 150 gates and sees over 1500 landings or take offs every 24 hours.
Our experience of the Tom Bradley, wasn’t a particularly pleasant one. The first interaction with the airport staff was having some border patrol assistants, for want of a better name, herding us much like cattle from not long getting off the plane into a long winding queue to be processed by the uniformed and side arm carrying border police. If you have heard the rumours that US border police have no sense of humour and are only one step up from being heartless robots I can tell you, those rumours are generally pretty accurate. In fact before departing the Air NZ flight there was an announcement to passengers telling us to please not joke around with the US border police , “They have no sense of humour”. Though we were simply transiting from Air New Zealand onto a British Airways flight, we still had to go through the whole process of checking out, collecting our bags, and then going through security yet again. Always a fun time after a twelve hour flight!
Now to be fair to the US border police, who ironically seemed to be almost entirely made up of young men and women of Mexican heritage, their unfriendly nature may just be the result of LAX training protocols. I say this because almost all the people working there, except two very polite and helpful baggage staff, appeared to have received thorough training in how to be disinterested, impolite and abrupt to all and any passengers that they interact with every day. If this is in fact true, I would like to congratulate the training officers as they have done a marvelous job and achieved a very high success rate.
Other interesting observations we had at the Tom Bradley terminal, which we can now refer to as TB – which seems fitting as it is best to avoid it, included our experience of using the public toilets there. Firstly, the ones I used at least three times in four hours as I have the call of nature far too much though probably a common challenge for middle aged men, had more than their fair share of graffiti (yes in an international terminal!), were dirty and looked outdated. Though it may very well be a feature of all USA public toilets, the paper hand towels were very small square pieces of brown, yes – brown, almost wax like paper. I was so surprised and annoyed that I actually verbalised what went through my head as I tried to dry my hands on it “What the actual hell…”. As I now think back to that moment, it probably wasn’t a great way of showing our traditional Kiwi ‘she’ll be right’ attitude while in a foreign country, or as in this case in a foreign toilet.
To be totally fair we did only spend around four hours experiencing TB, it was very warm, we were tired and slightly overwhelmed from the first time being in a very busy and very large overseas airport, so this may have tainted our point of view. On a more positive note, their duty free shopping area was impressive, much cleaner than the rest of the terminal and there were some seats around so you could sit down and rest. There were a few different food options, but a large percentage were the stereotypical big name brands, McDonalds, KFC, etc. Prices were, like in every airport – expensive!
One learning from all the airports we spent time in was that you need to think twice before buying any duty free. You start shopping in them with the belief you will be making huge savings, so buy up big! But, if you actually stop, think about the prices you usually pay in the standard everyday shops, you will likely find as we did that many of their products are in fact more expensive, in some cases a lot more expensive. I believe they are taking advantage of tourists ignorance to what the normal prices of those items are, sure you aren’t paying goods and services taxes etc, but that doesn’t stop them hiking the normal price up. For example we saw in an Auckland international airport duty free store Whittaker’s chocolate bars, not only were they duty free but they were “on special” at the bargain price of just $9nz each. However, the big problem with that price was that in most NZ supermarkets even at normal price they sell for around $5.90nz. There was another product that we saw in at least one of every airports’ duty free stores, at almost the same fairly exorbitant price – the staple food of extra sweet chocolate addicts, Toblerone. In this case it was the very large bars, and also in this case at a very large price. Again the claim was that it was being offered for a fantastic special price, buy two and only pay nine pounds each, which equates to around $18.50nz each. Again many supermarkets in New Zealand sell these exact same size Toblerone bars somewhat cheaper, anywhere from $9nz to $15nz.
OUR LONG HAUL FLIGHT ON BRITISH AIRWAYS
Unlike on Air New Zealand much of the emphasis in regard to great customer services, along with good quality food and drink on offer, seemed to be aimed almost solely at their first class / business class passengers. Being passengers in economy class, which we were two of many, felt a bit like being on the Titanic in the third class area – in other words, crammed on and all but ignored. In fact I think if the economy seating part of the plane had fallen off and the plane somehow remained in the air the cabin crew would have just shrugged their shoulders and then asked the first class passengers if they would like an extra glass of champagne to make up for that rowdy racket the third class made as they fell to their deaths.
To our amusement though, and knowing I am risking sounding quite judgemental, ignorant and maybe even racist, the accents and general appearance of the very British cabin crew did give us some amusement. I remember commenting to my Wife they all sounded and looked like they had either just stepped out of a Wallace and Gromit movie or off of an episode of Coronation St. The youngest male cabin crew member looked incredibly like Harry Potter, right down to wearing the same style glasses. My lovely Wife made a point of telling him this, to which he replied that wasn’t the first time he had heard it. When in the train at Heathrow taking us to the baggage claim area (Yes, you have to catch a train!), due to his bad luck he ended up in the same carriage we were in, and subsequently my better half committed loudly “Look, Harry Potter is here again.” I think he may be traumatised for life after being in our presence for those few hours on the plane and for the short train trip. I apologise and hope one day we can meet up again and this time not have my Wife call you Harry Potter – though no guarantees.
To be fair, the plane was clean and comfortable, the cabin crew, though seemingly uninterested, did an ok job, except when it came to making sure we all had enough water to drink – only offering it once in twelve hours outside of the two meal times. Though I am sure first class would have been offered a continual stream of artisan water.
We rate British Airways 6 out of 10 Kiwis
Heathrow
When we told friends we were going to the UK and Europe for a holiday, many gave us the same advice – avoid Heathrow airport! Of course being a sensible middle aged man with a large amount of tertiary study and life experience I knew the best thing to do would be to take what they had told us, and completely ignore it.
We landed at Terminal five, the newest of Heathrow’s terminals. Terminal five opened in 2008, and services up to ten million passengers per year. It is the size of 50 football pitches, at over 353,000 square metres. It is very nice, very modern, but I wouldn’t say that it is well laid out.
What really impresses you, and maybe to some extent frightens you about being at Heathrow is the sheer size. Departing from your plane, you walk, and walk, and walk. After what seems like several minutes of walking you get to border control, if you are lucky the passport scanner along with the advanced facial recognition software will let you through the checkpoint and onwards into the realms of terminal five. However, if you have a passport photo that for some reason has magically changed since you had the photo taken, or your face has changed, like me the scanner will reject you and you will be directed to see a real live border officer instead. So after that slight annoyance we were then mystified to be directed by signage, not very good signage which also turned out to be a regular issue in the UK, to the baggage claim area – by train. Initially we thought we must have got something terribly wrong and ended up at a train station which couldn’t be anything to do with the inner airport workings. But we were wrong, the driverless train was in fact an integral part of the airport, taking passengers who had just arrived through to the baggage claim area, Customs, and the very treasured way out and into London. The train trip isn’t long, taking maybe two to three minutes. Baggage claim at terminal five is very big with (by memory) at least six different carousels – you just need to find the one that lists your flight.
Unfortunately for various reasons, shortage of staff probably being the predominant one, bags can take quite a long time to appear on the carousels at Heathrow. In fact some regular passengers we chatted to while waiting for our bags told us sometimes in the past the delay was so great they started watching a tv series on their phone! For us on this occasion the wait was around 45 minutes.
Customs controls of any sort on both the occasions we landed at Heathrow appeared to be almost non-existent, you walked through with no sign of customs officers, sniffer dogs, or anything else! Surprisingly LAX was about the same – so much for the stereotypical belief that the USA had border officers everywhere ready to pounce! However, I would think, or is that hope, that either there were other checking systems in place that were just not visible, or maybe on the days we went through they were short of staff, as with their baggage handling, which is a common challenge for most employers post covid.