Flight check: Auckland to Sydney on Qantas

A hard-working Qantas Boeing 737-800. Photo / Getty Images

Winston Aldworth snares seat 1A on Qantas QF140 to Sydney.

The plane: A hardworking Boeing 737-800, one of the more fuel-efficient short-haul aircraft in the trade.

Class: Business. I'm seated in 1A.

Flight time: We push back right on the whistle and shave about five minutes off the scheduled 3hr 28min on the way to Sydney.

Fellow passengers: A mixed bag.

How full: There are 12 seats in Business, eight of them are empty (one of which, I'm happy to report was seat 2A). All 156 seats in Economy Class are full.

Service: Riz is looking after us in Business Class and she does a fine job.

Airport experience: This bird flies at 6.30am and, feeling pretty organised, I'm at the airport by 4.45am. Time enough to relax in the Qantas invitation lounge with good coffee and even a little eggs benedict. Of course, I keep an eye on the monitor - and there's the Sydney flight; 6.30am, Gate 10. I head for the gate once the message says "Boarding now". That's strange, I think to myself at Gate 10, I didn't realise it was a codeshare with LAN Chile. "This is the wrong airline," says the nice man looking at my ticket as I try to board. "You're meant to be at Gate 15." I can report that it's possible to do the walk-run-grimace from Auckland Airport's Gate 10 to Gate 15 in a little under four minutes.

Over in Sydney, LAN CC-BBI - the plane I tried to board back in Auckland - rolls in a couple of minutes after us. They're at Gate 34 and we're at Gate 35. It takes some fast footwork to get ahead of all their passengers on the way to the transfer security check.

Sydney Airport is undergoing big changes that will soon mean it has the world's biggest duty-free shop. Ah, the romance of flight, eh?

Food and drink: Here follows the most important two words relating to any early morning transtasman flight: Good coffee. They serve it from a plunger and the step up from regular airline java is notable. There are all sorts of theories about your taste buds working differently at altitude, the argument going that there's no point serving good coffee as it all ends up tasting like liquid roadkill once airborne. I don't buy it. There's going to be more labour involved in producing and serving coffee from a plunger, but it seems worth the effort to me. I ate French toast with berry compote and maple yoghurt. Cafe quality.

Entertainment: Seventh Son. Apparently The Dude, Jeff Bridges, has bills to pay. Sunrise creeps in the windows and peeks over our shoulders as we buzz towards the west.

Would I fly this again? It's a cracking way to cross the Ditch. But pay attention to the gate numbers.