[Flight Report] Emirates 5th Freedom A380 Auckland - Melbourne

EK 407 Auckland - Melbourne
Sept. 11, 2016

When I booked this flight, the anniversary of 9/11 did not come into my mind. Perhaps those are a distant emory although life has not yet gone back to normal these days, with persistent threats of terrorist attacks, liquid bans on hand luggage, and enhanced security everywhere.

Prices out of Queenstown were incredible, and it was only marginally more expensive to fly up to Auckland and cross the Tasman. Curious what Auckland is like, I decided to do this route, and picked Emirates' very reasonably-priced 5th freedom Tasman flight on the A380. It was a fairly last minute booking, but I was able to score a seat, with luggage included, for only about NZD 235.

Skybus offers a frequent airport service from downtown Auckland, I missed a bus and only needed to wait 10 minutes for the next service, which was fairly quick in light Sunday afternoon traffic. The bus first dropped off most passengers at the domestic terminal, and terminated at the international terminal.





Emirates has an incredible 3 flights leaving Auckland at around the same time. These are all 5th freedoms heading to Australia - Brisbane, Sydney, and Melbourne, before continuing to Dubai. Despite all these flights, I was surprised the lines to check in were all very manageable. Emirates still uses traditional check-in counters rather than the disastrous kiosk then bag drop machines Qantas uses. Passengers line up once and get a human to do all the work in 1 shot. There were many counters open and I immediately got processed.







Auckland is not a large airport and I didn't see many big jets when I arrived yesterday, so the prospect of 3 flights to Dubai within an hour of each other was a bit odd for this fairly small city. I didn't expect the flight to be full, which I confirmed with the check-in agent.

Emirates occupies a fairly large section of the international terminal. Qantas has a tiny section next door while Air New Zealand has a number of kiosks scattered around their area with thin human presence.





Departures are upstairs from the check-in counters. There were a few restaurants, including the fast food poison chains like McD, Pita Pit, etc. Selection wasn't spectacular but again, this is a small airport.











There were minimal lines for immigration and security and soon I emerged air-side where there were many shops and restaurants. I peeked out the windows and didn't find much inspiring spotting opportunities.















The terminal wasn't particularly busy but many were eating at one of the many dining options air-side. On the other side of the terminal are 2 Emirates A380s, which is an amazing sight with so many turboprops and narrowbodies taking off and landing here. I made the long walk to my gate, which seemed newer than the rest, presumably built to handle the A380s.









This parked plane would serve my flight today. Eventually, another parked A380 on the tarmac was towed next to this.













Fairly quiet down here today despite all the Dubai departures.



Boarding was separated into stages and things happened efficiently, presumably due to a lighter load. More on that in the next part.

The full report is at : http://www.globalphotos.org/ek407.htm