Why does it take longer to get your bags at Auckland's domestic terminal than the international one?
At what moment do you place the call, send the text or book the Uber? This is an as-yet-unsolved airport dilemma: knowing when to let your ride know you'll be bursting through the automatic doors, wheelie bag in tow, and ready for the car trip home.
It used to be that if it was Auckland's domestic terminal, you'd want your pick-up about five minutes after touchdown. If no friend or family member was there on airport-run duties, you could be fairly safe in booking the Uber as you were walking towards the baggage carousel. It might take a few minutes, but generally bag and ride would arrive at roughly the same time and you'd be good to go.
As for Auckland International, it was accepted wisdom you'd apply the same time estimates as for any international airport anywhere in the world: Add about 40-minutes to the arrival time and that's when you'd be hopping in the taxi, unless of course you were talking about a pre-refurbished LAX which could be anything from 40 minutes to two hours.
Times — quite literally — have changed and not all of it for the worse. I arrived back from Fiji a few weeks ago and I kid you not, from the initial kiss of the plane's wheels on the tarmac to those first rays of Auckland sunshine on my face was a mere 15-minutes. The years of growing pains with the international airport's upgrades are starting to prove very, very worthwhile and everything from the electronic passport technology to the immediacy of bags on the carousel to the biosecurity check couldn't have been smoother.