Flights from Masterton To Auckland are GO!

January 20, 2009 by
Filed under: General Budgeting, Life in New Zealand 

We are officially on the map.

It’s been a long time coming, and has had a lot of false starts, but from February 15th 2009, we poor country bumpkins will be able to fly directly from Masterton to the big City that is Auckland. Without having to drive an hour and a half to Wellington in order to fly for 50 minutes to Auckland.

I have to say – thank fiddle-dee-do for that!

Hubby does have to travel to Auckland on a semi-regular basis, and it can be a pain having to get up at the crack of dawn to race to the airport in Welly in order to get to Auckland in time for a days work.

We have been reasonably lucky in that IBM will often pay for a Wellington hotel the night before the flight, but many people here are not so lucky.

Of course – we ain’t gonna get Smartsaver seats – but to be honest – with a trip to Welly and back costing about $50 in petrol (when petrol is fairly cheap), and taking into account the extra hour in bed – it’s really not too bad.

Flights for the first week are being charged at $170 each way. If you fly from Wellington, at the moment, you can get a smart saver fare for $93 each way, but once the Smartsaver fare is gone – the cost is $196 each way. So worries that we would be expected to pay nearly $300 each way appear to have been unfound.

We have always had a line in our budget to pay for flights to Auckland for me, so that I can travel with Hubby.  I can’t always go with him –  so we save it for when he is away overnight, rather than me just heading up for the day. And it means I sometimes get to meet friends for coffee that I wouldn’t otherwise see.

mast-auck-flight-prices1

Taken from the Air New Zealand website
So all in all – I think we will be heading up from Masterton from now on. We can put up with only one flight a day each way. Given that we get 3 top notch trains a day to Wellington – I think we are now getting a bit “cosmopolitan”, now having a plane to Auckland as well.plane-homepage

Minor downside is that we will be flying in what my hubby lovingly calls a Phut-Phut plane.

We get one seat each on either side of the aisle – 19 seats in total. Cosy.

Hope they still serve fresh gravity coffee – we are gonna need the wake up.

Related posts:

  1. Masterton flight review
  2. Commuting to Auckland
  3. Masterton airport
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Comments

2 Comments on Flights from Masterton To Auckland are GO!

  1. Margaret on Thu, 22nd Jan 2009 11:20 am

    2. Does that mean when we come over we can fly straight from Aukland to Masterton as well. That woudl be great. Shortens the journey time.

  2. Avalon on Thu, 22nd Jan 2009 11:26 am

    3. Yep – though how much extra you will get charged by Dial-a-flight for the privaledge is yet to be seen :)

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