Peter Johannes Schmidt

Dear Air New Zealand,

I had a set of unfortunate experiences today,
and I’d like to tell you about it.

Firstly, let me introduce the appropriate context – this is Christmas Eve,
which is a trying time for all.

Secondly, I need to say that you have

communicated very well why this is a set of HiFly mistakes,
not Air New Zealand mistakes.

Thus, I do understand that this was not strictly your fault.
I actually did not speak to AirNZ staff until I wanted a Jack Daniels,
only HiFly staff, but you did hire HiFly so you should be fully aware
of the level of service they offered that motivated this blog post
(TLDR: poor).

Thirdly, I was hoping this would be a curious, fun learning experience.
I generally fly cattle class everywhere though so I expect a few rough edges
or trying times. However, instead of a positive learning experience,
I will remember it as pretty poor at best and unfortunately letting
my family know too over Christmas, so here’s a chance for you
to do some damage control if you’re fast enough.

So to my experiences:

My screen was broken. I’m perfectly fine with this, but perhaps my
day would have gone better if I had been offered a different seat with a working
screen, or a free premium economy upgrade (there were many empty seats I walked
past – I board only when the final call happens to maximise my free WiFi usage
playing fun online games like Boom Beach, which I cannot do on the flight).
The hand wash container things if naively pushed on squirt the handwash outwards
instead of downwards. So naturally when I was a little tired as happens to
many passengers on flights, even short ones like across the Tasman, I
fell into this trap. (The normal built-in one that I tried first did not
dispense any handwash – clearly the Airbus Engineers knew what they were doing,
but HiFly – evidently not so much).
I attempted to contact a staff member with the built in buzzer thing. It was
at an unfortunate time as the staff were dispensing meals.
Thank you for the free meal! That was a nice consolation for this inconvenience.
The HiFly staff member who I finally flagged down seemed completely unaware that
my call light was on. I did not get the staff member’s name, but flying NZ102
in economy Seat 33G, it should not be too hard to figure out if one so desired.
The staff member seemed completely uninterested in my predicament. To their
credit they did listen just enough to bring me a tiny wet towel. Which I had to
immediately tell them was not what I wanted – I wanted a dry towel (or
a blanket I later realized would have worked).
So finally I got a dry towel. Which was also tiny. And by this point in time,
10-15 minutes after the handwash squirt incident,
I had basically dried myself off by manually rubbing my t-shirt with my hands.
The flight did not stock Jack Daniels, thankfully the AirNZ staff offered
the excellent Johnny Walker substitute.
(This isn’t your fault AirNZ) – I would like a Coke Zero. Only Coke No Sugar was
available (this is one reason I am leaning towards selling my CCL.AX holding
at some point). Coke Zero is “peppier” for lack of a better description,
I vastly prefer it over Coke No Sugar (and I’d actually prefer water over CNS
but that’s my personal preference that I just forgot at the time after this
mini-saga).

Finally, I spent at least an hour of my valuable time taking photos and
writing this blog to you, instead of say working on my
Robocup SPL passion
or relaxing and enjoying the flight.

I have no idea if this would have happened had I chosen the cheaper LATAM
flight today. It’s also way way way better than being a doctor bashed on United.
If only Cathay Pacific (which I have happily used to fly
to New York via Hong Kong with no jet lag twice there and back now in the
past year) flew to NZ via Sydney I would be a much happier camper today.

Ball is in your court AirNZ, I may or may not have WiFi/Cellular while
in NZ as I like my time offline away from it all with family being a huge bonus.
You may also contact me privately at:
peter AT peterjs DOT com

Thank you for reading about this poor experience.
I hope I will have a better experience
on my return journey on Monday 8 January.

P.S. I’m sure it’s just a safety thing, but to add insult to injury,
and having already taken out one earbud in compliance before the staff
member arrived, the Portuguese staff forced me to take out both earbuds of
my noise-cancelling headphones
in the last 10 minutes of the flight. Having already finished the
inflight magazine in the first 10 minutes, I was left with nothing
to do but listen to three toddlers scream their lungs out, a living hell,
but thankfully consoled in the knowledge that this too shall pass.

P.P.S. Then the staff told everyone to sit back down again,
for no reason as a minute later the captain said we could disembark.
I burst out laughing at the sheer incompetence.

P.P.P.S. I’ll add the photos later once I get past the terribly slow
Auckland Airport WiFi =(