On this trip to the US, I decided to go on Air New Zealand. I was fortunate enough to get an upgrade to the new Business Premier class, and it was worth writing home about. It was wonderful. The seat was totally lie flat, with a length of 6’7″. The seats were private; I essentially had the space of two seats from other airlines.

I have previously traveled on Qantas to the US a couple of times, and have had upgrades to their Business Class a few times too, the last time being December 2005. If you are paying for the Business Class ticket, the two airlines charge essentially the same (about 4 times an economy ticket). How do you choose between the two? Here’s my take. If you are traveling by yourself, go Air New Zealand. You’ll get a private area for 12 hours. If you are traveling with a spouse, go Qantas, as you’ll get to sit together and sleep next to each other. Going on Air New Zealand with a spouse would be really strange, as there is a (seated) head height divider between the two of you.

The seat on Air New Zealand is much nicer than the Qantas variety, however there is a real dearth of pictures available of the seat. The Air New Zealand web site has a very small picture of a portion of the seat. The best pictures I found were at this LA Times article, and if you look below, you’ll see my contributions to the picture stack too.

The seat …

The head height dividers …

The lie flat bed experience is a marvel to behold, and happens at the press of a button; what you don’t see on this video clip is the footrest that forms part of the bed … watch what happens to turn the seat from a seat into a bed

The bag of free goodies on Qantas is better equipment than Air New Zealand. Air New Zealand includes blue sox, a blue sleeping mask, a toothbrush, toothpaste, and ear plugs. Qantas offers many more items … such as face wash gel, lip moisturiser. Qantas definitely outpaces Air New Zealand on this count.

Laptop batteries last a good 2-4 hours on modern laptops, but even that’s not enough for the 12 hour flight from New Zealand to LA. Thankfully Business Premier has a power plug at each seat, and get this, you don’t even need an adapter. It takes standard New Zealand plugs, plus a variety of other ones. I noted that British plugs were not supported, meaning that you will need to bring an adapter.

Thanks to Ron …

… and Ed for their excellent service in the part of the cabin that I was seated in.

All-in-all, Air New Zealand’s new Business Premier is very nice. Make that wonderful!

Tags: air+new+zealand+business+premier