New Zealand 2009 - Tales of the Camera Sherpa - Home

We're back in Albuquerque. Getting home was not without its adventures. Of course the weather was absolutely perfect the day we're leaving just for fate to give us a laugh.

I don't like to tempt the fates so I tend to get to airports on the early side. We arrived before our flight a couple of hours early around 10:30 AM. We find that the entire Air New Zealand international computer system has crashed and they are checking in all flights manually. It's chaos. We stand around for almost 2 hours while the time for our flight comes and goes before there is word of what our status is. Then we have to go to the international departures area to check in (fortunately we are on the ball and get into our queue early) and have to go back to the domestic terminal to catch the flight.

Except it is still an hour from arriving. But Air New Zealand has a lounge for members of the Star Alliance Gold which I qualify for because of my status on United Airlines. This lounge is good! Free food - real food. Free booze, beer, wine. internet. Finally our plane arrives and we are escorted from the lounge to the plane to board first - nice touch. Another piece of good luck - I have boarding passes I downloaded ages ago with bar codes and therefore I can actually get us on early and to our assigned seats.

We get into Aukland and we have to walk around a half a mile to get to the international terminal. We only have an hour and a half. Should be enough time. Not to worry. The flight to LA is 2 hours late. Problem - that is going to make us miss our connection in LA to Albuquerque.

We're waiting in the business class lounge (just as good again) and I notice on the flight board that our flight has a stop at some island in the Pacific before going on to LA. That hadn't shown up on any of the information that I'd gotten on the flight previously. There is also a direct flight that even with lateness will get us in with plenty of time. Wife asks if I will request them to change us which I do. The first answer is they can't do it because I'm flying on a United issued ticket. But then the guy says he'll check. Good news they can do it if they can pull our bags. Better news, they successfully pull our bags. Even better news, the flight we're on now has the fully reclining seats which the other did not.

Finally we go off. Not much to report other than it was a good flight and we had no further problems getting home. 26 hours later it feels great to be home again.