Flying from Dunedin to Auckland on Jetstar

Jetstar airlines. Photo / Getty Images

Thomas Bywater flies from Dunedin to Auckland on Jetstar flight JQ284.

The plane: Airbus A320.

Class: Proletariat.

Price: I paid $55 one way. A bargain.

Flight time: An hour and a half in the air — five and a half in the airport.

After an abortive boarding, much waiting and an awkward announcement from the captain — we were asked to get back off the plane. The "technical reasons" weren't serious enough to bother us passengers with the exact nature but complicated enough to merit flying an engineer in from Christchurch to fix.

The smiling cabin crew escorted us off, backhanding piles of airport coupons like Henry Hill in Goodfellas.

My seat: 24A

Fellow passengers: A combination of the end of the summer holidays and a busy north-south route made for a full flight. Mostly European backpackers, families and Jafas migrating home to Auckland.

This made for an interesting exercise when evacuating the cabin. Through combination of sign language, schoolboy French and translation apps — I tried to answer the questions of the passenger opposite. "Ey man, where's everyone going?"

Entertainment: Apart from a brief game of "what can you buy with an $8 airport coupon", I ploughed through Let My People Surf by Patagonia's Yvonne Chouinard: a cautionary tale of how inside every free-spirited revolutionary is a businessman trying to get out.

The service: Crew did an excellent job of getting an irate planeload of passengers airborne.

The airport experience: We had plenty of time to explore Dunedin Airport. Like the Ancient Mariner, I spent what seemed like an eternity contemplating the stuffed albatross over the departure lounge. At some point we tried the Air NZ lounge. A combination of our Jetstar tickets and looking as if we'd been living in the bush for the past week (which we had) meant we didn't get far. "No. Just, no." was the emphatic response of the koru-clad gatekeeper. Ouch!

The bottom line: The summer classic.