I wanted to record a few details about our flights to NZ but haven't had a chance 'til now. The trip took over took 40 hours to complete, which is by far the longest trip we've ever taken. The flight from Singapore to Melbourne was on Singapore Airlines and it was the first time we've flown them. As you might expect they serve a Singapore Sling , and as the beverage cart drew closer to us, someone ordered one. The flight attendant got slightly jostled and a small cascade of the drink spattered right into us. The other flight attendant saw it happen, apologized for the little mess and quickly asked if we needed anything. He brought a towel, apologized more, and we cleaned up. Over the course of the 8 hour flight, we had almost hourly visits from multiple flight attendants of varying ranks apologizing for what happened. Each time we reassured them that it was no big deal and they needn't apologize anymore. Several times it felt like they might be taking a police report for the incident! I'm not kidding! We were worried that the flight attendant might be taken off in handcuffs! Towards the end of the flight, the flight attendant who spilled the drink on us came to us and she apologized yet again. And she said that because of our suffering (and again we assured her it was trivial) she had taken $150 (Singapore dollars) from her account to give us each a duty free voucher. We tried telling her that we didn't need any such thing and wouldn't spend it since we can't carry anything else around, but she insisted that the incident wouldn't be resolved (for her boss) until we accepted the checks. Clearly they take customer satisfaction seriously! Compare and contrast: on the Air New Zealand flight from Melbourne to Christchurch, the cheerful flight attendant spilled mashed peas on the floor near us. We got nothing!
Another unusual flight thing... We needed to submit e-visa requests for both Australia and New Zealand before traveling to the countries. We submitted online visa requests back in mid October and got almost instant approval for them. Two days before traveling I noticed that Sam's NZ e-visa had a typo in her first name. For these things, their site says that minor fixes can be requested online and quickly processed online, so I did that and got a confirmation email saying that they'd process it before we got to NZ...but we didn't get it before the journey began. Our trip over here started on Turkish Airlines and they were pretty hard-ass about us having all our e-visas in place. A bunch of folks on our flight seemed to be sweating this issue as we saw lots of people near tears at the ticket counter. But thankfully we had the documents handy on our phones. And we had to show the e-visas multiple times along the journey at each airport. I was wondering if we'd get hassled entering NZ since we hadn't gotten the new e-visa approval for Sam, but thankfully that wasn't the case. They did ask us if we knew what stink bugs looked like since we're from a place that has such and they really, really don't want them here. They gave us a hotline to call if we saw any! Anyway, 5 days after arrival in NZ, we got approval for Sam's visa saying that she would now be allowed into the country. So Sam's illegal alien period seems to be over.
Lastly, here's your pro tip--if you have a 12 hour layover, it's a great idea to have it in a town where a good friend lives. We got to catch about 5 hours of sleep in Melbourne at Emma and Andrew's house. Emma even cooked us some comfort food, and we got to meet their lovely kids before heading back for Christchurch flight which arrived after midnight.
Another unusual flight thing... We needed to submit e-visa requests for both Australia and New Zealand before traveling to the countries. We submitted online visa requests back in mid October and got almost instant approval for them. Two days before traveling I noticed that Sam's NZ e-visa had a typo in her first name. For these things, their site says that minor fixes can be requested online and quickly processed online, so I did that and got a confirmation email saying that they'd process it before we got to NZ...but we didn't get it before the journey began. Our trip over here started on Turkish Airlines and they were pretty hard-ass about us having all our e-visas in place. A bunch of folks on our flight seemed to be sweating this issue as we saw lots of people near tears at the ticket counter. But thankfully we had the documents handy on our phones. And we had to show the e-visas multiple times along the journey at each airport. I was wondering if we'd get hassled entering NZ since we hadn't gotten the new e-visa approval for Sam, but thankfully that wasn't the case. They did ask us if we knew what stink bugs looked like since we're from a place that has such and they really, really don't want them here. They gave us a hotline to call if we saw any! Anyway, 5 days after arrival in NZ, we got approval for Sam's visa saying that she would now be allowed into the country. So Sam's illegal alien period seems to be over.
Lastly, here's your pro tip--if you have a 12 hour layover, it's a great idea to have it in a town where a good friend lives. We got to catch about 5 hours of sleep in Melbourne at Emma and Andrew's house. Emma even cooked us some comfort food, and we got to meet their lovely kids before heading back for Christchurch flight which arrived after midnight.