Official policy stipulates:
- 20kg checked baggage
- 10kg free sporting goods allowance
Hong Kong International Airport is so ridiculously big that it has its own rail shuttle services between gates.
The first leg to Auckland was pretty good. The plane did seem a bit old in that there were ashtrays in the toilet doors but it was pretty empty and easy to do your own thing. I watched 'The Road' and skimmed through 'The Exam' at 32x. Crappy screen contrast didn't help with viewing those kind of dark movies.
For this flight, there was a Chinese man as flight service manager. I thought his New Zealand accent was funny - I think it kinda contaminated his putonghua. It also got me thinking about how the airline provides a regionalised service for passengers in that the staff, entertainment system and printed materials seem to be catered for Asia as well as the splattering of New Zealand and general Western culture. Seems so mafan.
Auckland was a crappy stopover. Security was bored so they seemed to examine everyone's bags in detail for international transfers. The bloke was interested in my coloured staples and metal vice - a 'very dense metal'. hmmm
The public announcement lady didn't trip up when reading out challenging foreign names but I wasn't impressed by their weak guilt trip for final boarding call. "All the other passengers are waiting for you" wasn't delivered with much conviction. One could just imagine the other passengers oblivious to this matter. Also, the loudness wasn't standardised between announcements. "Due to blah blah... USA security... requires you to clear immigration and proceed directly to the boarding gate" was unusually loud and isn't relevant for the majority of passengers.
I spent my 6 hours watching BBC Life in the undergrowth documentaries. The flight to Melbourne was delayed and the weather wasn't all that great.
The flight home was even worse after boarding. An Airbus A320... horrible layout. There was only a single aisle down the middle and the seats were rather close to each other. In seat entertainment was quite modern and the safety briefing was rather disturbing with the body-paint uniforms.
Australian customs/quarrantine had a dog walk past everyone but failed in the end due understaffing. I used the e-ticket/smart system, which I supposed can be likened to self-service checkout at the supermarket. At least for the customs lady there. I ticked food and wood on the card. They only asked about the wood - which were the mini table-tennis racquets I had bought at Jusco's 10-dollar store. They lost interest immediately and waved me out.
Anyway, the mass totals were:
- checked baggage 19.2kg
- checked baggage 4.8kg
- "sporting goods" 9.1kg
- cabin/backpack 5.8kg
- personal effect/laptop 3kg
Wow...where to begin...guess i'll go chronologically...
ReplyDeleteAs with all check-in counter staff, tolerances can vary wildly, and I don't mean just +/-10%. I'm also assuming there's a sexism element in there somewhere since two lady friends of mine came back with 54kg of check-in luggage between them...
HKG is big, but not THAT big...it's got two parallel tracks between gates 21 and 80, that being the long arm of its terminal layout, whereas Singapore Changi has three different maglev shuttles running between its three separated terminals...anecdotally, I used to think that the HK shuttle was also maglev, till I got a chance to examine the rails...
Coming to food, it's probably surprising to you to find that the red wine would not be the most expensive item, rather the beers would be, since they go flat rather more quickly in the dry atmosphere than the wines would go sour...at least that's my logic, and I'm guessing it partially explains why they have the beer in cans and the wines in...something else...
Regionalised service, that's common. SIA does it very clearly, with Chinese on the menus and generally Asian food on the SIN-HKG legs, and just English and somewhat more western foods for MEL-SIN. Also, there were announcements made in mandarin and cantonese for the HKG flights, and obviously none on the MEL flights.
As for your flight shock with the A320, understandable, especially transferring from a widebody long haul jet to a narrowbody short/medium hauler. I had the opposite feeling on my trip since I was so used to being on A320s and 737s that getting on a plane with TWO(!!) aisles was magnificently alienating. I used to sit in the 737s and looking out the window to see a 777 roll past I'd think of how it could just squash us...
And finally, just a quick word that your window pic, while spectacular, indicates that you were seated about 5 or 6 rows forward of my own ideal spot, where I could observe those wonderful trailing surfaces at work...
End Communication
what i don't understand was, why didn't you just get a cathay pacific from HK straight to Melbourne!?!?!?!?
ReplyDeleteoh btw, if you ever go into business class, they give you champagne with fruit something something something, which is fancy (if not more expensive) :)
hey that's some nice stuff u get to drink on the flight! i would've enjoyed the convictionless delivery of "all other passengers are waiting for you".
ReplyDeleteWill:-
ReplyDeleteFor the 777 they had wine in the normal-sized bottles but for the A320 it was DIY with a 187mL plastic bottle, which I've souvenired.
AirNZ had some propaganda about how their add-on wingtips can save fuel, though they weren't present on the 777.
Jase:-
It was a saving of $700 to do it this way!
Sam:-
haha, I should have recorded it... But I also wrote about it on the airport feedback form. Maybe it won't be there next time.