Woman seeks to rekindle airline romance with mystery Kiwi, turns to web

A traveller has confessed to falling head over heels with a mystery Kiwi on a 14-hour flight to Heathrow.

Were you the “handsome Kiwi man” flying from Shanghai to London?

A lovestruck traveller is trying to track down a man she had a chance encounter with on a flight.

Amy Frances from London was trying to rekindle a jetstream romance with a mystery New Zealander, who she shared a 14-hour flight with on Wednesday.

Having met “Nick” the two seatmates hit it off almost instantly.

Frances did the obvious thing to track down the mysterious Antipodean: she posted her chance encounter to the Kiwis in London Facebook Group. In a country of only five million, and seemingly only 2 degrees of separation between London’s Kiwi expats, she assumed someone must know Nick. Surely.

She described Nick as “tall, plays hockey, lives in Islington and works in anti-money laundering” and she would desperately like to track him down. Wouldn’t we all!

She mentioned they were seated in “Row 69″, as if that might jog his memory.

“If he’d like to check-in with me again, I’ll be ready for our love to take off,” she wrote.

Having published her public crush to the expat group overnight, the UK woman’s appeal didn’t take long to turn heads.

Frances had hundreds of responses and likes, with more than one potential Nick.

The woman from London knew that the Kiwi expats were a tight-knit community, but she had not anticipated so much enthusiasm in her search for the mystery New Zealander.

“I didn’t quite expect this to ‘take off’ like it has,” she told the Herald.

So did she find the elusive long-haul hunk? Yes, she says. In less than six hours she had been re-introduced to the mystery Kiwi, tagged by his friends online.

The Bush Radio delivered.

Comments ranged from encouragement to confusion - the Nick in counter financial crime they knew was married.

Frances was also eager to find out if her seatmate was single, but she was hopeful.

“I’m assuming not married since he told me he lives with housemates in London,” she said.

One simply congratulated Frances for being seated in their “favourite row”, picking up on the numbers’ naughty connotations.

Other ex-expats were delighted to help saying it reminded them of the Rush Hour Crush, a lonely hearts column in the London commuter newspaper Metro.

The freesheet which turns 25 in April says that the column has helped make countless meet-cutes, and at least three weddings and two babies.

The column for rekindling conversations or chance encounters on the Tube became a staple of the newspaper.

With anonymous entries the Antipodean twang is clearly a hit with UK commuters.

“To the magical Kiwi girl who gets the 8.40am from Victoria … be my District line Valentine.” Or “the tall blond Aussie guy on the 15.36 train from Euston … I missed a digit when I typed your number into my phone so I can’t message you!”

In 2020 the New Zealand accent was a voted as the world’s sexiest accent and, in 2023, the Australian brogue was most in vogue according to a separate study.

If only they could tell the accents apart.