All was good, the only thing was it didn't run on time.
All was good, the only thing was it didn't run on time.
The staff and crew on board were excellent. Business class however, was very weird. I thought we would have individual pods, but the way it was set up was unexpected. Not very private and If you wanted to lay down, you had to have an entire bed made up for you by the crew, rather than how Delta one works where you could just lie down whenever you feel like it. It was a 16 hour flight. I chose not to have my bed made, and that turned out to be a good idea because everybody who had their bed made had to wait for the crew to roll up their mattresses. So strange!
Food was not good. We asked for Muslim food and it was weird tasteless type of boiled veges.
Couldn’t request a vegan meal somehow but I noticed other people getting them
The recline on the seat in front of me came back so that I was staring at the top of the man’s head in front of me the whole trip. He refused to bring his seat back up twice every time he was instructed to do so and only relented when he had a tray of good in front of him. And then right back in my lap!!! Horrible man!! I complained to the staff multiple times, but no one would address the issue. Otherwise, it would have been a perfect flight.
So here's the rub - my flight was booked through Chatdeal even though I bought it under the Kayak umbrella. All the return flights were theoretically through Air New Zealand, however except for the initial leg from New Zealand, they were all partnered flights. So when I arrived at the airport in New Zealand they could only issue me my ticket to Fiji. Once in Fiji I had to do some serious leg work and finagling to get my ticket to Los Angeles through Fiji Air. This included a monitored covid RAT that I wasn't aware I needed to do. So I gave the score I did because of the complexity and annoyance created in the process of getting a boarding pass for my Nadi-LA flight.
Flight attendants are always pleasant and helpful. Pilot kept us updated.
Just a hiccup being added to the NZ Traveller Declaration a bit late.
Boarding instructions on one leg of my journey were not well communicated at the gate (Melbourne to Auckland)
The only thing that was less than excellent was the food server at dinner. (I had the chicken.) It wasn't that it was poorly heated or in difficult-to-open containers; it was just that it had a very peculiar taste. And I use that to describe not just the main course but the dessert as well. Very odd flavours for what seemed to be a mainstream item. I did like that the airline offered us a free glass of wine. The breakfast omelette wasn't bad, although it was quite bland.