Air New Zealand's flights from Auckland to Buenos Aires begin today, boosting competition in the travel market between this country and South America. Among the passengers on this evening's inaugural flight is former All Black captain Richie McCaw, who recently re-signed as an Air New Zealand brand ambassador for a further two years.
Hamish Fletcher flies on NZ30, Air NZ.s inaugural flight to Buenos Aires.
The plane: A Boeing 777-200ER.
Class: Premium Economy.
Price: One-way Premium Economy fares start at $2839.
Flight time: We cover 10,324km in a little over the scheduled 11hr 20m.
My seat: 23J, which is at the front of the Premium Economy section, the last seats before Business Class. The seatsin this row have more leg room than others in Premium Economy. The tray table is stashed in the armrest, which marginally reduces the width of the seat.
Fellow passengers: Former All Black captain Richie McCaw, Associate Trade Minister Paula Bennett, Air New Zealand executives and president and members of New Zealand's Latin America Business Council. They were all travelling up the front in business, but judging by the lack of noise they were well behaved, with Bennett coming further back in the plane to hold babies and do the rounds like it was her electorate.
How full: Not to the brim - a few spare seats in our section.
The service: Exemplary - the drink top-ups (of water or otherwise) were readily provided by Peter, the steward for our patch of the plane.
Drink: A mix of New Zealand wines, champagne, spirits, port and liqueurs, Steinlager Pure and Mac's beers. Juices on offer include orange, apple, cranberry and tomato.
Richie McCaw aboard the inaugural flight to Buenos Aires. Photo / Michael Craig
Food: A cut above the usual plane tucker - in fact, the best I've ever had. Two options of starter, prawns or a rocket salad. They'd run out of the prawns so I had the later, which came with herbed goat's cheese, walnut paprika tarator and marinated artichokes. On to the main, I foolishly turned down the Argentinian gourmet steak sandwich (egg, swiss cheese and bacon, served with tomato chipotle sauce and mustard mayonnaise) - I suffered a major case of food envy when the bloke next to me got this. I opted instead for paprika-dusted hapuku with olive oil and chive mashed potatoes, a vanilla bean and spicy apple crumble icecream with pomegranate caramel and pistachio meringue.
Toilets: Clean and usually empty.
Luggage: Two bags (each can be up to 23kg) in the hold and two carry-on bags (combined weight of 14kg or one bag of up to 10kg).
A traditional Maori welcome for Air New Zealand's inaugural flight to Buenos Aires as it lands in Argentina. Photo / Michael Craig
Entertainment: Great up to date array of movies, including recent Film Festival favourite Amy - the doco about the late great singer Amy Winehouse. Also featured Michael Fassbender's Macbeth, which seemed to have only just come out at the movies in New Zealand. They also offered Tom Hardy's Mad Max: Fury Road as well as the earlier iterations of that franchise staring Mel Gibson. TV series included season two of True Detective.
