We have now travelled twice between LAX and Brisbane Australia via Auckland Airport. We are completely organized, and well travelled. We pay close attention to announcements, arrival and departure boards, and gate locations. We always keep all relevant travel documents on hand for instant display when requested. And many other folk are just a savvy as us, and this is why travel runs smoothly. However, at Auckland Airport, we found a serious problem. Not with our own travels, but important enough to let all of y'all know about it.

We decided to fly Air New Zealand because the fares were so reasonable. The New Zealand dollar suffered more than the US dollar (or even the Australian dollar - we usually fly Qantas) and Air New Zealand prices are based out of New Zealand. We had the best fares we had ever paid for in 11 years of our travels together. So this necessitated a stop in Auckland to complete our flight. There are many considerations when planning air travel. One is knowing where the hubs for the various airlines are, and knowing which routes can be travelled nonstop by which airlines. If we had travelled Qantas, we would have been able to at least stay on the same flight all the way through to Australia even if it did stop somewhere.

So here we were with four hours of wait time in New Zealand. New Zealand has so much to offer the tourist. I myself have travelled in a group with 12 students who had disabilities on the south island, and I only have stories of magnificence and friendliness. One of my complaints on on our previous "transit only" visit was that one could not purchase the very famous New Zealand ice cream in the largest airport in the country. It makes sense to me to sell the things a country is famous for in the airport, just in case, like us, you don't actually get to leave the airport. We did promise ourselves we would remedy that situation on another trip. The Airport has some stores, and on this visit I can confess that in the "Kiwi Discovery" store freezer, I found small white tubs of New Zealand ice cream, but to me they were of indeterminate age and travel experience (One could never be able to tell if the product had melted in transit, then refrozen, or undergone any number of delivery catastrophes.) I was not willing to risk Dean's first taste of New Zealand ice cream on the mystery tubs.

A Very Dreary Auckland Airport

But I digress. Back to the problem: We were noticing that every flight departing was announced, but only as a "Final Call". After this time, we would hear "Would the final (insert number 1 - 10) passengers for flight 123 please board at gate 1 as the plane is fully loaded and we everyone is now waiting for you." Then we saw a flight attendant running, literally, through the entire departure lounge and store area, with a walkie talkie, loudly announcing the plane and asking for the passengers. A few minutes later, the individual passenger names were announced. Then we would see a small group of people running from the end of the gate area back toward the store area, frantically asking anyone they found "Where is gate 1?" Then we noticed that the signage to gates 1 and 3 was not as noticeable as the signage to all the other gates. There were two different information booths, both staffed with friendly helpful people concerned with getting you to your flight on time. This did not matter. The people who were waiting far beyond the booths in the gate area were not on time for their plane, and did not even know they had a problem until their names started to be announced.

What fascinated us was that this problem seemed to happen with EVERY flight, so how was it that someone had not worked out what was going wrong? We have no idea how many people actually missed flights, but it was bound to happen with all of the confusion. We suggest you check thoroughly and match your boarding pass with your gate, then find where your gate is, no matter which airport you travel through.