And to put that price into perspective, for $900 I could buy flights and four days' accommodation in Fiji or Rarotonga, or return trips to Bangkok, Honolulu or Singapore. Or visit Melbourne, Brisbane or the Gold Coast and get three nights in four-star hotels for $650.
Cheaper fares also open up smaller regional areas such as Taranaki, Manawatu, Nelson and even the deep south of Inverrrrcarrrgill as potential long weekend destinations.
But first we need to get by Rotorua which, they will tell us, has an international airport.
And what an expensive debacle that was ... it has cost the city millions and the now-canned Sydney service wasn't much of a success at all.
Rotorua has the advantage of already being a tourism mecca, but Tauranga has twice the population and is growing fast. And we smell better.
In summer, the neighbours over the hills cannot compete with our climate, water-based activities - dolphin and whale tours, game fishing charters - or our beaches. And Tauranga's restaurants win that contest too.
So pray to whomever you pray to that Tauranga's name comes up, as it will make a big difference to our city.
LOOKS like another pillock is aiming for the White House in America.
The previous one got there for two terms - one George Dubya Bush, the US President who uttered the famous line: "The French don't have a word for entrepreneur."
Now we have another chap, Donald Trump, who has made an outrageous attack upon a war hero.
Trump, famous for his dreadful hairstyle, was peeved at fellow Republican John McCain, who said Trump's campaigning was "firing up the crazies".
Trump hit back by saying: "He was a war hero, because he was captured. I like people who weren't captured."
McCain spent five terrible years in a North Vietnamese prison, after being shot down on a mission as a navy pilot during the Vietnam War.
Trump's words have infuriated many Republicans who like and respect McCain.
Those who heard them at the Iowa meeting booed Trump.
And that's no big surprise because, while he doesn't like people "who were captured", Trump never put himself in the way of danger during the Vietnam War.
In fact, he avoided serving there, receiving four student deferments from military service between 1964 and 1968.
Where is my box of white feathers?
WHILE we tend to be big-city focused, there is a lot to be learned from New Zealand's smaller towns.
Take, Masterton, where they seem to value the genteel art of book reading.
Masterton has just under 21,000 people within its boundaries, which means it is about one-sixth the size of Tauranga.
And yet Masterton's council has just voted to spend $200,000 each year for the next decade on new books for its library.
This means they will be raising the number of books per thousand residents from 2.62 to the recommended standard of 3.5.
In Tauranga, it looks likely the 10-year spend will be $798,000, less than half of Masterton's.
This means the current 2.4 books per person will have dropped to 1.96 by 2025. Pretty poor really, don't you think?
HOW about this for a new politically correct phrase that someone has come up with?
I ran across it while reading an article promoting a theatre production in Northland.
It said: "Tickets are $15 waged, or $10 unwaged."
Surely, they mean working or non-working. Fair go, it had me gagging, not ungagging.
richard@richardmoore.com
Richard Moore is an award-winning Western Bay journalist and photographer.
