KEY POINTS:
It's not quite like Obama's juggernaut of a campaign, but John Key looks content with his slightly tinpot 19-seater Beech aircraft and the pack of about 10 media scuttling along behind him.
He emerges at Taupo and beams at the media entourage. "This is just like the Partridge family," he says. "Only with a plane instead of a bus."
The charter plane is taking him on a whistle-stop tour around the nation for the closing days of the campaign - what he calls a "symbolic" way of asking the nation to vote for him.
He has worn special cufflinks - one shaped like the North Island, the other like the South Island.
At each place he tells the audience that America has voted for change, and now it is New Zealand's turn. The tour itself is all very American presidential - the plane, the "rallies" with supporters in all the different centres.
He's had a good start to the day - when he arrives at the first stop in Napier, he turns on his phone to find a text message from British Conservative leader David Cameron wishing him the best of luck for the weekend.
He loses some good cheer when he gets back on the plane and discovers one of the Partridge family has taken his Turkish Delight chocolate.
Some places really are whistle-stop - in Taupo Mr Key tells the 60 supporters on the street corner that he is "here for a good time, but not for a long time" and then leaves after 20 minutes. Places to go, people to see.
In Christchurch, he finds out not all those people are keen to see him.
His "rally" meeting to about 150 National supporters in Cathedral Square has been hijacked by Labour Party-supporting union activists.
They hold up signs saying "the world is voting left" and chant things like "where is Mr Flip Flop?" while he is trying to speak.
He does his best to rebuff them, turning on them good naturedly with his microphone.
When he moves towards his car, the unionists are unimpressed. "He came, he saw, he left," one shouts. "What a disappointment. Just like a seagull, he came in, dropped some s*** and left."
He brushes the fracas off as part of the normal "vigorous exchange of debate" in a campaign and 15 minutes later he is again surrounded by the soothing coos of an admiring public.
A woman at a beauty stall pulls him in to give him a hand rub.
Another does the same further down the mall. He says his hands have never been softer, and then the plane takes off again for Nelson.
At the Sealord factory he is again facing a sceptical audience. The union has been at work distributing Labour brochures before he arrives.
The day ends in Nelson - a sizeable rally of about 200 people. Today he will end his trip with commuters at Wellington railway station, a visit to Palmerston North and New Plymouth, before a lap of Auckland suburbs on a bus.
* All media paid for their seats on the National Party charter flight.
