Table of Contents
Tom Hunter
No Minister
Like every Kiwi going overseas I’ve experienced plenty of long flights, courtesy of the simple fact that we’re one of the most isolated nations on the planet. It’s almost a perverse point of pride that we raise our eyebrows in amusement when Euros and Yanks start bitching about five to six hour “red-eye” flights.
Pussies, we mutter sotto voce, with a little smile.
No, for us, the three to four hours to get to Oz is a breeze and we fly between here and London with nary a thought to the 11–12 hour hops of Auckland-Singapore-London or similar routes. Likewise the introduction in recent years of Qatar and Emirates flights to Europe via their Middle Eastern hubs, with non-stop flights of 16–17 hours before you get the last, shorter dash to your Euro city of choice. My Italian one with Qatar was 17 hours AKL-DOH.
But that was in Business Class and it was great, with a cubicle all to myself that I really stretched out in and slept well. Even Kiwis blanch a little at the thought of so many hours in an Economy Seat, even a “Premium” one, so this has become an issue as Air New Zealand pushes into the same territory with 16-hour flights Auckland-Chicago and 18-hour flights from Auckland to New York.
Air New Zealand’s answer is The Pod.
You can hit the first link if you want to see a video about it, complete with Air NZ people talking about how they figured this out – lots of customer discussion supposedly.
I don’t know. For a start, “Skynest” sounds uncomfortably close to “Skynet”, but that’s probably just my SF and IT inner nerd thinking (mind you, calling it a pod also brings to mind other dystopian SF stories).
What gets me is that the $495 is what you pay on top of your basic ticket price: it’s only for a four-hour period in The Pod and, as you can see, it’s a bunk-bed setup.
Given that when I fall asleep it’s usually for more than four hours, for that extra money wouldn’t I be better off flying Business Class? I have not done so on Air NZ and I doubt they match Qatar’s quality, although the accountants and their pricing models have presumably accounted for this.
And I haven’t slept in a bunk-bed situation since I was a teenager on a school camp. From memory not even the Youth Hostels of my early 20s tried that on with young adults.
Especially now that we know, via Smart Underwear, that we fart twice as much as we thought we did.
Anyway, on my next trip to Chicago, whenever that happens, I think I’ll forgo this tempting offer and pretend I’m as flexible as I was in my 20s – preferably in Business Class. Depending on how that goes will decide the next Chicago trip after that – if there is one.
This article was originally published by No Minister.
