Winston Aldworth: It's over-sized and it's over here

Singapore Airlines has brought an Airbus A380 into service on its Auckland - Singapore route. Photo / Supplied

Today, a new visitor enters the Auckland skies. Singapore Airlines is switching up their services into Auckland by bringing an A380 into the game.

The first of the services is due to land just before midday. The 471-seat A380 replaces the 278-seat 777-300ER, running passengers to Asia and back on flight SQ285. The A380 service will be daily (Singapore also has five other services a week running 777-200s out of Auckland).

Singapore Airlines is only the second airline to bring a regular scheduled A380 service into our skies, Emirates already dominates the "flying skyscraper" end of the market here with their daily services to Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane (all of which connect on to Dubai and all points elsewhere).

For plane nerds, it's exciting times - there's another big, freaky thing to point at in the sky. It's good for local tourism - Auckland Airport has estimated the A380 will bring an additional 55,000 seats into the market during the peak summer period.

Regular passengers should be chuffed too as variety and competition are good for our wallets. This new arrival means you can now go, in one hop, from Auckland to Europe in an A380. That's pretty cool.

We're unlikely to see too many more A380s here in the near future - unless someone fancied taking the game to Air New Zealand by popping one onto an Auckland-to-US route. The national carrier is the only airline connecting this country to mainland US, and there seems to be plenty of demand for seats.

So, welcome to town, big fella!

Video: Singapore Airlines A380 arrives in Auckland

The hard questions

Speaking of flying to the US mainland, some of the questions encountered in the process of getting a visa for the US are goodies. My favourites:

"Do you seek to engage in terrorist activities while in the United States or have you ever engaged in terrorist activities?"

"Have you ever or do you intend to provide financial assistance or other support to terrorists or terrorist organizations?"

"Are you a member or representative of a terrorist organization?"