Two birthdays, 160 passengers, one saxophone battle, a hens’ party, a speedy tyre change and four hours of live club classics.
There was a lot going on when Air New Zealand transformed the cabin of flight NZ1331 from Auckland to Sydney into a concert in the sky.
On Thursday afternoon, high-energy musical performances and Air New Zealand’s gung ho branding combined to pull off what was touted as an aviation and entertainment first: Synthony in the Sky – a one-off inflight rave held high in the high-altitude airways over the Tasman.
Tickets for the sold out, one-way charter flight went on sale in August and the $549 fare included a Golden Circle pass to Synthony’s Australian concert, which will be held on the iconic Sydney Opera House Forecourt. But passengers didn’t have to wait until they were across the ditch to get a feel for Synthony’s signature experience.
The knees-up began well before wheels up: Auckland Airport’s Gate 18 was decked out, setting the tone for what ZM host and flight MC Clint Roberts later promised to be “the most epic weekend of your life”.
Synthony musical director Dick Johnson DJd in front of a sparkling silver wall, Air NZ staff passed canapes around on trays and a beverage station of AF Drinks non-alcoholic cocktails welcomed sequin-clad travellers.
Stepping off the travelator into a crowd dressed for a disco rather than the Customs queue, one passenger was heard saying “It’s like a full-on festival, but we’re at the airport!”
Dry ice billowed around a doughnut wall and an AI-assisted roaming photobooth allowed revellers to choose their Synthony personality. Two violinists joined Johnson and got the passengers dancing. When an announcement was made that a mechanical requirement (a tyre replacement) meant a short delay in boarding, no one seemed to notice.
Once travellers were on board, glow sticks, virgin mango margaritas and branded lanyards awaited on seats. One passenger, wearing a T-shirt emblazoned Glitter Fairy, stood with a tube of sparkling highlighter in hand, offering to embellish the faces of passers-by.
In row 1, captain David Elmsly was uniquely positioned to welcome people aboard the party plane. Elmsly is one of the founders of Synthony and has been an Air New Zealand pilot for more than 20 years.
“Flying a plane and organising Synthony, they might sound like totally different things, but they’re kind of very similar. You actually need to be super organised to make a show like this work, because there’s so many elements,” Elmsly said, calling the flight a “surreal, full-circle moment”.
With all phones switched to flight mode, the plane swapped to fun mode. Cruising at 32,000 feet, a familiar chime rang through the cabin, signalling the seatbelt sign had been turned off. It was quickly followed by a funky trill as musician Lewis McCallum began grooving down the cabin, squeezing past the trolley delivering pies, belting out notes on a clarinet.
Johnson set the rhythm of the flight and Australian Idol star Emily Williams paraded in the aisles, delivering rousing renditions of electronic hits including Basement Jaxx’s Good Luck and Rihanna’s We Found Love to an audience that included a hens’ party, loud lads’ trips and members from Synthony’s production company Duco Events.
About 40 minutes out of Sydney, around the time the plane ran out of alcohol, McCallum and Matty-O staged a saxophone battle, starting at opposite ends and meeting for a honking standoff in the middle.
After the display of “big sax energy”, MC Roberts told the crowd: “You have never, and may never see that on a plane again people.”
Synthony will play for 2500 people at the Sydney Opera House forecourt tonight, but the spectacle became all the more immersive in the confines of the high-altitude concert venue – an Airbus A321neo. The floor-filling electronic hits spilled out from every curve of the cabin, thanks to an ambitious set-up in which overhead cabins opened to reveal speakers positioned throughout the plane.
Grace Blewitt, Air NZ’s general manager of global brand, said countless hours of testing had gone into making sure they could pull the four-hour flight off from a technical and safety aspect.
“We’re pretty sure it’s a world first”.
The airline thinks it was worth it, to support a Kiwi-born programme that’s now on to the world stage.
“Synthony is just an outstanding formula. And it’s just something a little bit different. We kind of like to be on the edge of things where they’re a little bit new, a little bit unique ... finding their footing on the world stage.”
Blewitt said concert and music events are important to the airline business and its customers because they’re travel opportunities in the “sweet spot”, the “intersection between music, culture, something a little bit unique”.
“Synthony in the Sky sold out in six hours, that tells us people are really looking for those moments of connection, and music is a really strong shortcut to that.”
The emotional connection between sound and scenery was reinforced in the lyrics projected by Shapeshifter’s P Digsss, who bopped the length of the plane, singing hits and bolstering the mood with calls of “NZ1331 let’s go” and “yes crew, yes crew!”
Introducing a Shapeshifter track from 2013, the frontman said, “This is a little one called Monarch, we wrote this in Berlin, when we were missing home, it’s our love song to Aotearoa.”
A quintessential party anthem, Darude’s Sandstorm, was meant to close the show – but requests for an encore echoed down the rows, a jolly chorus asking for a “one more song, one more song”.
Digsss was more than happy to oblige.
Soon afterwards, the crew asked for window shades to be raised for landing, exposing daylight outside. It wasn’t unlike the feeling of spilling out of a nightclub, only to be greeted by the sobering sunrise.
The sky-high spectacle was an unexpectedly exciting experience for New Zealand-born Theo, who had been transferred on to the flight at the last minute, unaware it was a chartered party.
“I had no idea any of this was happening until I turned up to the gate and there was a DJ and they were giving out drinks.”
A member of the Air New Zealand marketing team swiftly welcomed him into the party, rustling up two VIP concert tickets for the Sydneysider.
“Happy days!” Theo laughed, taking a picture or two of the scenes unfolding around him.