On arrival at Auckland

[Duncan74]

That may be my spot. Having seen the plane I'm not sure I'll fit inside. I swear I've seen bigger radio controlled planes.

(Ok, so it was a 1:5th scale Lancaster Bomber at a show at Elvington airfield)

[Kiwi Mac]

Tauranga is an interesting choice!

At least it will only take 10 minutes to walk from one terminal to the other.

[Duncan74]

Tauranga is an interesting choice!
.

There was a job offer. It's by the sea (OH's requirement more than mine). It's a few hours from Taupo (handy for me). And it's not Hamilton (no idea why, but so many posts from unseccessful attempts to settle in Hamilton, and half the Kiwis I meet over here are from Hamilton).

[alldone]

I have been through Auckland Airport many times and I would think that the length of time you have is very adequate. As previously stated you should be OK anyway if booked on one ticket.

My experience is that flights to NZ tend to be early. Also the check-in times for Air New Zealand Link flights are very short (The planes only have a few people on them after all - it goes "boarding at gate xx ... 1 minute pause ... final call for flight yyy" ). Check-in is 30 minutes with luggage and no security to get through (you walk through a door onto the tarmac, along a walkway painted on the tarmac and climb the stairs into the plane). I live in Nelson with a slightly bigger airport than Tauranga and can be from house to parked at airport to in plane taking off in 35 minutes (if hand luggage only). So much better than Heathrow or Glasgow (previous 2 local airports).

As long as your bike tyres and boots are squeaky clean you will not be substantially delayed by biosecurity. If your bike behaves like my wife's cello's it will probably make it off the plane before you do. Biosecurity has usually been the biggest delay for us with immigration not causing more than a few minutes delay (we have been using the non-residents queue as when we lived in the UK my children only had UK passports because I was too cheap to pay for NZ ones as well!).

The ANZ link planes are quite small but larger than they used to be. They used to have something my family nicknamed the flying pencil that had 1 seat to either side and I had to bend almost double (6'2") to get to the back, but the newer planes are much more spacious (picture attached of the 2 sorts of commercial plane you can have from Nelson - I suspect the Tauranga one is in between).

With the shortage of positions for commercial pilots in NZ at the moment the pilots of even the tiniest ANZ link planes tend to be quite experienced - just sit back and enjoy the ride.

[Duncan74]

Sadly the Tauranga one is the 20 seeter one. Was fine before with the bike on NZ1/2, but didn't bother with any internal flights. Bio security is less of a worry as it'll be a road bike and I will make sure it's sparkling. The mountain bikes that will follow in the container are trickier as it's a mare to get the tyres clean and the mud out of the suspension gubbins.

[alldone]

We brought our lawnmower and garden furniture and childrens garden toys. I pressure washed the toys and lawnmower (took all the labels off!) and gave the garden furniture a good spray with bleach. They insisted on steam cleaning the lawnmower (cost NZ$50) but gave us points for trying with the other things and cleaned a few cobwebs and dust of one of the garden chairs I had forgotten to clean (it was in the shed). The un-packers said that as long as you have had a good attempt and there is not too much substandard they will be lenient (or even clean it themselves as in our case). Took ages to clean all the shoes and childrens gumboots etc (very wet and muddy winter in 2009 even by Glasgow standards).

[Duncan74]

Same on our visit, although it all got a bit tense when I'd put the brand new unused poles of a tent in a different bag to the one with the 'evil bio hazard' stuff. So the material and pegs were there for them to see, but I mistakenly judged that they didn't need to see the poles. I'm sure they'd have been less flustered if they'd discovered a stash of AK47s and 32kg of heroin in the bag.

Walking boots were a pain, and that's the sort of job that I'm getting started on now. I know it's 2 months away, but I can't see me getting the time to go walking any more over here.

Oh, and I'm 6'4", hence the concern with the Beechcomber 1900!

[alldone]

Yeah, I was flying once and a whole basketball team got on one of the smaller planes. They were practically crawling up the aisles. On the positive side, once you are sitting down it should be OK and it can't be a very long flight to Tauranga from Auckland.

[moses]

Ooh. I forgot planes come in bigger sizes than our wee local ones that land here.
I still remember thinking the Air NZ Taupo plane was just a postie plane and that a proper one would be along for us soon.

[Daniel]

Duncan,

Nothing more to add about all this, than I wish you have a nice trip and all the best with your new life in New Zealand.

Cheers,