Kate Hawkesby: For all the people ‘hopping across the Tasman’ at the moment, I can tell you it’s not a hop

For all the people ‘hopping across the Tasman’ at the moment I can tell you one thing - it’s not a hop.   It used to be a short haul quick trip - painless. But these days it seems to be less painless and more painful. I’m not sure who’s more at fault - Auckland airport or Air New Zealand, or both. Of the three times I’ve crossed the Tasman in the last month; I’ve been held up on the tarmac or delayed every time - twice without any communication at all. Once was a lengthy tarmac sit where they announced after an uncomfortably long wait - that there was an issue with the brakes needing fixing. More delay - then another announcement - they’d need to actually replace the brakes. How you can’t sort the brakes out before you board everyone is beyond me but that added two hours to our flight, so the short hop across the Tasman was no longer short and we hadn’t even left the ground yet. Likewise coming home the airport had no dogs rostered on, so they were screening every single bag of every single passenger including flight crew - queues for miles, no one knowing what was going on, so much delay my sister missed her connecting flight to Christchurch. Many others missed their connections too. Air NZ also has this new annoying thing where they announce boarding, yet when you get to the gate there are no staff there, no one is boarding anyone, and no communication. So passengers are all standing around wondering what’s going on. This last trip to Sydney a man got verbally abusive over the fact that when they did finally allow people to board they boarded everyone at once and didn’t prioritize premium passengers as they’d said they would. This man started yelling at the ground crew that as a premium passenger who’d paid extra he should not be at the back of a very large queue. He was yelling, but the crew did nothing. My brother was flying out of Auckland yesterday in a party of eight, they got an email from Air NZ saying they were downgrading aircraft and therefore passengers, so a heap of people got put down the back into economy - people who’d booked business class and premium. Cue more grumpy travellers. At check in, the only oversized baggage conveyor working had a glitch where the in-feed belt didn’t load, so massive queues, more upset passengers worried they’d miss boarding. When they called everyone to the gate for boarding, again there was no boarding, more delays and then they announced engineering issues.   Again, why board everyone if your plane isn’t ready to go. And why aren’t the planes ready to go? So further delays for what was ostensibly just a three hour flight. He was on the tarmac delayed for an hour fifteen, before they even pushed back from the gate. His group were all separated on board, which also happened to my daughter and I, as the seat booked for her was broken, so she ended up on the opposite side of the cabin to me. This is all a bad buzz for people wanting to travel - it doesn't inspire goodwill from your customers. We deserve better - but so do our visitors to this country. It's an embarrassingly shoddy experience that gives an awful first impression. Both Air NZ and Auckland airport have some serious work to do, to be more professional, so it feels less amateur hour out there. They need a manager on the ground at Auckland airport walking the floor and seeing in real time what a circus it is - and then doing something about it.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.