Anyone any experience of Air New Zealand?

If you can afford it fly Business class…plenty of seat pitch excellent food and superb New Zealand wine….well that was in their DC10’s back in the seventies

I’ve just come back from Hong Kong (you’ll have a fantastic time btw), flying ANZ. Despite the lack of on line check in, check in at LHR was a breeze. The flight was pretty empty, so managed to bag four seats together. The over night flight (11 hours 25 mins) left on time. Plenty of legroom, although the armrests don’t fold all the way up, making sleeping across a row of seats a little uncomfortable. The food was good (dinner and a full breakfast served) with a choice of meals. The entertainment was 1st class, with oodles of films, TV progs, games and music, and didn’t crash once! The crew were hit and miss with some superb, very chatty and couldn’t do enough to help, and some fairly average, but no one was awful. Arrival on time at the wonderful HKG. Return flight (8:15 am) was made slightly less painful by checking in at the Airport Express station in Kowloon, and flying straight through to security off the train. Flight again on time and pretty empty. Food again good (breakfast, mid flight hot sandwich and ice cream, and dinner before landing). Again the crew were a bit hit and miss. Water handed out a couple times each hour, and chinese tea served with each meal service (nice touch). All together, much better than my flights with Virgin and BA. And thank goodness the cabin crew were strict on keeping the blinds closed between the two meal services – made sleeping so much easier.

you weren’t allowed to have the window blinds open so a 10 hour flight in the afternoon

I’d be concerned if any airline did allow passengers to have their window blinds open for a 10-hour flight. I have taken many long-haul flights in my time and I can’t recall a single flight where I haven’t been asked to close it. To help the time pass quickly, passengers like to sleep. If the sun is beaming through the window, sleeping is an impossible task.

They are terrible. I have flown with them several times on a multi-leg trip, and had nothing but problems. The crews were rude, you weren’t allowed to have the window blinds open so a 10 hour flight in the afternoon was spent in darkness, the food was horrid, I asked for a special meal in advance because I have a food allergy and they served me the type of stuff I told them I couldn’t eat. Their reservations staff are incompetent. We phoned to reconfirm our reservations and was told that all our flights had been cancelled. We got back on some but we were supposed to have a stop in Fiji. We didn’t get on a Fiji flight and instead ended up going straight to Honolulu instead.

One word of advice when considering the Airline from Hell – AVOID!!!

They are a fabulous airline 😀 but then im biased. I have flown with them numerous times out there and have never had any qualms. Always friendly service and I have never felt cramped in cattle class.

Unfortunately I have not experienced the new IFE so am not able to tell you about that – although I will find out what its like when I next go out in August.

If youre going in June, winter, you may be lucky to have a fairly empty cabin if you are on one of the 747s. I have gone out several times in that period and due to the lack of popularity as it is the winter season, the cabin has not been too full and as such several times I have had 3 seats to myself.

Hope you enjoy it! Oh, and they dont mind coming back and forth topping up your glass of whiskey either!