I woke before my alarm went off at 0600 and checked that my 0900 flight to Hobart was still operating. I was relieved to see that it was! Last two Sundays, the flight had been cancelled with last week’s one at the very last minute. Fortunately, this trip, I’m on a firm ticket with commercial conditions and not on standby.
At the airport before 0700, Air New Zealand’s kiosk area was busy. There were kiosks still available but they were too hard to access with the number of people and their luggage carts. But it only took 20 mins for me to navigate the crowd, get my boarding pass and bagtag to drop my bag onto the automated conveyors.
Getting airside was a breeze today and I had about an hour in the lounge, which had reopened just over a month ago after the pandemic.
The Air New Zealand A320 was quite full, mainly with an elderly crowd. It was one of the older aircraft in the A320 fleet, equipped with rather upright thickly padded seats, which meant less legroom, with very little recline.
It was a great relief when the doors closed and we departed Auckland.