Groundhog 5/11...again!

He Said...

We arrive in Los Angeles 8 hours before we leave Auckland and we then arrive in Miami 5 hours after we leave Auckland, but in the middle of all that we lose 25 hours.

So Air NZ premium economy...it looks like BA business class, smells like BA business class but still tastes of economy. It all looks very stylish, all new white leather cubicles with buttons and lights, a beanbag for your feet and video on demand, nice menu, snacks and drinks orderable off the touchscreen TV, big soft pillow and blanket, a simple but adequate sleep kit and it all seems value for money....until that is you try to sleep.

Now the chairs reline, well they slide forward and the seat part drops...a bit... but because it's a 'pod' your seat doesn't actually go back and your legs can't stretch any further than the foot cubbyhole you have...it just doesn't work and not just because I'm the Jolly White Giant but because form came before function, aesthetics championed comforthetics ( new word alert) because the people that designed it probably never spent a night in it, and don't just take my word for it, read Ais' blog.... Oh wait...riiiiiiiight, never mind.

It's really simple airline people... buy 300 lazy boys with manual recline, bolt them to the floor and give them a seatbelt, anybody can fall asleep in a big fat lazy boy! Forget all the fancy artisan food, we can eat before we get on, keep back some Pringles, a Mountain Dew and a cup of Joe for the morning, make sure the toilets are spacious enough so a bloke can pee without contorting himself in some weird super yoga pose and then clean them, frequently.

And that's pretty much it, stop trying to out design each other, it's not the MOMA it's a flying cinema, an air lounge, a sky sitting room...think of it as so.

Suffice to say we arrived in LAX out of it, like zombies, and had 7 hours to kill before our Jet blue red eye to Florida, which by the time we landed at 4.30 am in Fort Lauderdale I was over flying anywhere anytime soon so I'm gonna hang in the MIA for a while.

If you need me, I'm at the Astor on SoBe.
Peace.