To start off this quest, I had visited a number of airports in NZ without considering this as a challenge.
First off was Auckland. We arrived in April 2007 through the gateway that is AKL. We had flown in from Brisbane, after specifically choosing the flight that featured the 747-400. Although this isn't featured on the brief hop from Oz to NZ recently, only the 777 on some flights. We chose it to get a chance to check out the Business Premier product on the upper deck and were suitably impressed. We arrived in AKL and then transfered to CHC.
As we arrived off a BP ticket we were able to visit the AKL domestic lounge in the domestic terminal. Again impressed (although we had recently experienced the Concorde Room in Heathrow before flying out) and intrigued by the large range of beers in the fridges!
We then flew down to Christchurch so that was two airports already on the list without much effort. We flew back to AKL a couple of days later to start our tour of the North Island before we settled into Wellington life.
So April 2007, 2/27 (Oamaru was on the list at that point, but sadly no more - finished opoerating 31/12/09).
Monday, May 24, 2010
Thursday, May 20, 2010
The Idea - stupid but still an idea
I had a thought one day at the beginning of the year.
Firstly, a little background - I have a passion for flying. Not in the plane spotter sense, standing at the end of runways with a notepad and binoculars, but a real enthusiasm for flying around the world visiting a few interesting places along the way and looking around the inside of airports.
The passion began in the summer (northern hemisphere) of 2004. My fiance at the time had completed a long hard graft of studying and wanted to take off and see some more of New Zealand (we had visited in 2001 for four weeks). This was the other side of the world as we were living in the UK. The plan was that we would meet up in a months time in LA and cruise up the west coast of USA to Vancouver. So I searched for one way flights to LA as I had managed to amass enough BA miles to get us home from New York in Business Class.
I decided to splurge the cash and find a cheap business flight to LA. Ended up going on Aer Lingus, which not being a pro of J class at the time, thought was pretty splendid, travelling in 1A and sampling lots of fine wine and grub. My fiance was put out when she found out I went J after she had endured a flight from AKL to LAX in the back....The flight home with BA on the upper deck more than made up for it though.
Well, after those two flights and in particular the BA flight home, I was totally hooked on travelling toward the front of the plane and my love affair with flying truely began.
Fast forward 6 years and lots of First and Business flights later and a move to New Zealand, I had come up with an idea, albeit a seemingly stupid idea.
I had managed to obtain the top tier (Gold Elite) of Air New Zealand's frequent flyer programme with a carefully constructed RTW trip via oz, tahiti, hong kong, USA and the proper destination of UK to visit friends and family. I had become acquainted with everything Air NZ and am really impressed by their offerings both domestic and internationally. Coming for the UK I am amazed at the domestic network that NZ has. They fly to no less than 26 domestic airports!
Through work and a bit of sightseeing, I noted that I had been to 7 of the airports already by the end of 2009. Then it struck me, why don't I visit all 26 airports? And lets do it by July.
So there you have it. I have decided to fly to all 26 domestic airports by the end of July. I am certainly not the first person to do this (there is a particularly famous person around some parts of the internet who has done this and even extended that to every port that NZ flies to in the world...), and probably wont be the last. But, there aren't that many people around who have embarked on this odd mission.
Why? - Well, no specific reason I guess, just thought I would give it a go.
I am going to do a few back dated posts to get up to speed with the previous airports I have visited and hopefully try to work out how to put a countdown timer thingy on this blog.
Watch this space....
Firstly, a little background - I have a passion for flying. Not in the plane spotter sense, standing at the end of runways with a notepad and binoculars, but a real enthusiasm for flying around the world visiting a few interesting places along the way and looking around the inside of airports.
The passion began in the summer (northern hemisphere) of 2004. My fiance at the time had completed a long hard graft of studying and wanted to take off and see some more of New Zealand (we had visited in 2001 for four weeks). This was the other side of the world as we were living in the UK. The plan was that we would meet up in a months time in LA and cruise up the west coast of USA to Vancouver. So I searched for one way flights to LA as I had managed to amass enough BA miles to get us home from New York in Business Class.
I decided to splurge the cash and find a cheap business flight to LA. Ended up going on Aer Lingus, which not being a pro of J class at the time, thought was pretty splendid, travelling in 1A and sampling lots of fine wine and grub. My fiance was put out when she found out I went J after she had endured a flight from AKL to LAX in the back....The flight home with BA on the upper deck more than made up for it though.
Well, after those two flights and in particular the BA flight home, I was totally hooked on travelling toward the front of the plane and my love affair with flying truely began.
Fast forward 6 years and lots of First and Business flights later and a move to New Zealand, I had come up with an idea, albeit a seemingly stupid idea.
I had managed to obtain the top tier (Gold Elite) of Air New Zealand's frequent flyer programme with a carefully constructed RTW trip via oz, tahiti, hong kong, USA and the proper destination of UK to visit friends and family. I had become acquainted with everything Air NZ and am really impressed by their offerings both domestic and internationally. Coming for the UK I am amazed at the domestic network that NZ has. They fly to no less than 26 domestic airports!
Through work and a bit of sightseeing, I noted that I had been to 7 of the airports already by the end of 2009. Then it struck me, why don't I visit all 26 airports? And lets do it by July.
So there you have it. I have decided to fly to all 26 domestic airports by the end of July. I am certainly not the first person to do this (there is a particularly famous person around some parts of the internet who has done this and even extended that to every port that NZ flies to in the world...), and probably wont be the last. But, there aren't that many people around who have embarked on this odd mission.
Why? - Well, no specific reason I guess, just thought I would give it a go.
I am going to do a few back dated posts to get up to speed with the previous airports I have visited and hopefully try to work out how to put a countdown timer thingy on this blog.
Watch this space....
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