NZ1 LHR-LAX 12 Oct 07 (PE)
Posted: 01 Nov 2007, 03:21Got to LHR from Reading after a 45 minute journey on the RailAir coach. I've used it a few times since the OH has been living in Reading, and it seems quite reliable, and not too ghetto. Convenient as well, as the OH lives only 5 minutes walk away from Reading station. I guess I can only wonder about how quick it would be if common sense had prevailed and the Heathrow Airport rail spur had been built with a West-facing junction!
Found the Air New Zealand check-in, in Zone E (near the counters SQ use), and the various check-in lines were well signposted, with a 'crowd herder' stood at an ANZ podium directing people to the right queue.
Being *A Au, I was directed to the Business Premier check-in, and I only had to wait for a moment before one of the three agents could attend to me. ANZ used to use United almost in entirety to handle them at Heathrow, but all the staff now seem to be in ANZ uniform, with no obvious clue that they work for a third-party (even if they did).
Check-in was completed very quickly by a friendly agent: I'd already phoned ANZ up to confirm my APIS details to save time... they have an 0800 number in the UK, even though you end up speaking to people in Christchurch. Anyway, this made things nice and quick, and a lounge invite (for the UA Red Carpet Club) was issued (because of *A status, not for travelling in PE).
I was dreading security, not having fast track access, but it turned out to be fine, no queues out in the landside area, and it split into three queues once past the boarding card checker, some of these queues split further to more than one X-ray machine. Taking the right-most line, as it seemed the least busy turned out to be a good move, as the right-most scanner was providing additional capacity for FastTrack when I arrived, but once they had cleared the queue there, they switched back to handling us mere proles, making our queue rocket along nicely. Result. Couldn't escape shoe carnival unfortunately. (I wonder how this is implemented in the new VS premier security line?)
A brief detour to pick up some shopping for people, plus a few essentials for myself, and I decided to give UA's dull RCC a miss. (That said, I've not been in there for over a year, maybe they spent a bit of money on it?)
I headed for The London Lounge, which I can use because (for those who don't know), a *A AU member can use any *A airline's lounge that displays the appropriate 'Star Alliance Gold' sign.
The Air Canada concierge on the desk there mentioned that most ANZ passengers would be down at the UA lounge, but 'We're always glad to have you here, make yourself comfortable'. I wasn't so much as 'you're in the wrong lounge', more a warning that 'We won't call that flight in this lounge, and there's no ANZ rep here...'
Kicked back and relaxed, even took a shower - sure their showers aren't to Clubhouse standard, but they are clean, tidy and welcome, along with being in keeping with the rest of the Scandinavian-ness of the lounge.
Finally headed down to gate 23 to find our aircraft, the VS customers in the Clubhouse would have had a nice view of ANZ's ZK-NBW 'Wellington'. However, I also found boarding chaos that would make VS look good. A big long queue of people, and a United Airlines gate agent combing the queue for people without ANZ boarding cards - turned out that people connecting at LHR from other airlines was a fairly good indicator of missing APIS on their PNR. These people were being brought forward into the gate room to have their details taken.
I decided I'd sit to one side for a while and see what happened. Shortly afterward, an ANZ concierge arrived from the direction of the UA RCC with some pax in tow, and called for 'Business Premier and Premium Economy', at which point I was herded to the front of the queue into the equally chaotic looking gate room. Here I found the person in front of me was 'Miss 23H', my neighbour for the next 11 hours, so I introduced myself. She commented 'I've seen more organised airports in Africa' under her breath! Yay! Go LHR.
The ANZ concierge herded all the BP and PE pax over to another desk and started boarding us from there, having decided that the main desk was just moving too slowly, and from there it was straight down the jetway (only a mini-scrum there) where I was welcomed aboard at the door by the FSM, greeted by name, and directed upstairs.
The ANZ PE seats are not quite as flash as the VS PE seats, they are basically economy seats on steroids, slightly wider, and with better leg room, covered in a faux-suede-effect cloth, and very comfortable. Best of all, beside the water bottle already in the seatpocket, and the blanket on the seat, there was a little teal coloured pillow (a la our mourned red pillows)! The side boxes on ANZ are very deep, deeper than I remember on VS aircraft, so plenty of space for my bag too. There was one 110V androgynous EU/US socket for laptop power provided down near floor level for our pair of seats.
The crew were around quickly offering pre-departure drinks - usual water, oj, or an NZ sparkling wine. Served in glass for Business Premier, but only plastic for PE, sadly. Menu cards were handed out, and I found myself very spoiled for choice! Starter was a tea smoked salmon fillet, and there was a choice of three mains, a steak, a chicken and a halibut. It all sounded great!
My neighbour, Miss 23H, who turned out to be a student travelling to Fiji for a sailing competition, turned out to be quite a seasoned traveller and quite liked the cabin and service. Unfortunately, her next flight would be in 'regular' Economy on a 767, so not as swish!
Pushback was just a few minutes late, and we headed out to runway 27L, 'at the mercy of ATC' as our Captain put it, but got airborne around 1650, after hardly any queueing so not too late at all in the end. Usual WOBUN to take us off toward Scotland and the Western Isles.
Hot towels offered after takeoff, followed by drinks from the bar, a selection of three NZ reds and three NZ white wines, various beers including Steinlager from NZ and I think London Pride, plus a full range of spirits, including some signature cocktails using '42 Below' vodkas (a premium NZ-made vodka).
The two crew on the upper deck serve both PE and Business, and the service is pretty good, despite what looks like low staffing levels. A third crew member would make a really big difference in the speed and level of the service and take it from Good to 'Really Great'. I think the service downstairs with more people must move a little more quickly, as I found a crew member from downstairs coming up to help on both NZ flights on this trip.
You get a tray layup which has already got your starter on it, plus the usual wine and water glasses, etc. In PE, it also has your dessert on it, in this case a caramelised rhubarb topped cheesecake (In Business, you get a choice of two desserts, and these are served seperately). Wine is delivered at the same time as your meal tray, and is topped up through the meal.
The starter was great. Well presented and fresh tasting, but I have a big soft spot for tea smoked salmon anyway, as there is a deli near work does it!
The main courses were served from a trolley, the dishes laid out so you could see what you were getting. Spoiled for choice, I decided to go for the steak (despite it being served with a scallion potato cake), because beside it being a generous portion of fillet steak, it also came with a big helping of truffled wild mushrooms. I really wasn't disappointed at all by the quality of the meal. The steak was pretty much perfect - nicely browned on the outside, with a seasoned butter melting over the top (it had just been put on by the crew), but still warm and pink in the middle. A world away from the nasty 'homogeneous' steak we got in the Med menu on VS. I think the only thing which let the main meal down was the presentation, as it's done as an 'oven-to-table' meal, and all the food seemed 'squeezed' into the serving dish.
The only other let down was the bread had gone cold by the time it was served.
I got offered dessert wine shortly after my main dish was cleared. I didn't see them offering it to everyone, so I wonder if it was an acknowledgement of being *A Au? Or maybe they just noticed I seemed to be on a mission to get half-cut on fine Kiwi produce?
Cheese (good selection including Blacksticks Blue) and port were offered from a trolley after the main meal, along with tea and coffee.
The FSM came around with the various pieces of arrival documentation for the US, and I noticed that he spent time with every Business Class pax, and he acknowledged me personally by name and introduced himself (so *A status was recognised).
IFE is AVOD, with a good selection of films, including new releases, NZ produced content, and a number (like 20 or so) 'classic' films. TV selection had some items in common with VS (such as Catherine Tate, Little Britain, etc.), but included NZ-oriented content as well, such as 'Flight of the Conchords'. The interface isn't as slick or intuitive as v:port, sadly, and it is based on a different system - Rockwell Collins eTES rather than the MAS 3000 which is behind v:port and other similar systems. This means that the seat hardware is running WinCE rather than the embedded Linux found in MAS 3000, as I found out when my seat crashed and I got to watch the boot loader for a bit. The seat did reset itself though, and didn't seem to need crew intervention.
One thing ANZ do with their IFE is that they also provide 'broadcast' IFE too, so if you find the whole AVOD thing a bit complex (i.e. if you're my parents) you can use the old fashioned up-down selectors and still get to about 20-odd films and 20-odd channels of music. The broadcast selections are just selections from the same media that is available on the AVOD server. This broadcast stuff is also available in the event that the AVOD bit is broken, but the server can still stream programming, so slightly better fallback than VS have on their MAS 3000 install.
Routing was the usual run up over Greenland, then down Hudson Bay, pretty much following the Great Circle route, overhead Winnipeg, into North Dakota, Wyoming (via the fabulously-named 'Crazy Woman' VOR beacon), didn't get to see Devils' Tower, though according to skymap we passed near it, then near Salt Lake City, overhead Vegas and into LAX.
Between meals, help-yourself snacks such as crisps, cheeses, fruit, biscuits, chocolates, bottled water, etc., were laid out.
The second meal service was a very nice afternoon tea with some refreshing fresh fruit, followed sandwiches and scones. The sandwiches were very nice, and served 'Service Anglaise' from a tray, so you only got sandwiches you wanted, and there were more than enough sandwiches to go round.
We landed at LAX a touch early, at 1915 local time, though on the South side of the complex, on Runway 25R, meaning we had a long taxi over to Terminal 2.
However, when we arrived at T2, there weren't any other international planes there. I wondered where the VS23 had gotten to. Just as we were pulling onto our gate, having to be towed on by a tug because of the lack of manoeuvring space, I could see an Air France 777 approaching the terminal, and a VS A340. Could we have beaten the VS flight, even though we took off behind it?
Anyway, this meant that we were greeted with an empty immigration hall, and the crazy thing was that the officers in the 'US Citizens' channels with nothing to do were calling for the next person in line, but everyone wasn't paying any attention and just stayed in the queue. Okay, there was a pillar blocking some of the view, but even the crowd-control staff weren't paying any notice. In the end, I started pointing people over in that direction, and I was promptly seen by a very pleasant officer who thanked me for noticing they were there and waiting to process us. I joked that I'd help organise their lines any day!
Bags were off very quickly, and priority baggage appeared to have been honoured properly, mine was somewhere in the first 30 or 40 pieces.
Overall, I was very impressed with the experience on ANZ.
Service was as good as VS PE when it's on good form, if not better. The crew were typical NZ, friendly, slightly laid back but very hard working.
The interior of the plane was in excellent condition, very clean, no grime allowed to build up in nooks and crannies like on VS. The lavs were among the cleanest I've seen on any aircraft.
Food was of a better quality than I've recently experienced in UC on Virgin, though the NZ presentation wasn't the best - probably on a par with most other airlines' J meals. Compared to VS PE, I think the food was definitely better. Bigger quantity, and better quality. Naturally, great NZ wine, and dessert wine was a nice surprise (though it's offered on all flights).
I can almost forgive that they would normally put you in a crummy lounge at LHR (UA), and the boarding chaos, because the inflight experience was so good.
Having flown with them before and recommended them then, my sentiments are unchanged. I'd happily fly with them again. Even their Economy product on the 744 looks great.
Oh! I almost forgot. Especially for GJ... ANZ provide a socks/shades/plugs/toothpaste amenity kit, but it comes in a nice soft plastic reuseable wallet/washbag thing. Lipbalm and other bits are offered from a basket, and Living Nature handwash and moisturisers are provided in the lavs.
Mike