Air New Zealand

It 's not a big secret among my friends that I am a huge airplane/airline nerd.  I love to fly and love everything about flying.  When I owned my own import store Lao Lao Handmade I was very lucky to travel to SE Asia a lot.  EVA airlines has a very comfortable flight out of New York with a premium economy class that made the flight much easier.  Thai Airways  had for a brief time a direct flight out of JFK also with a premium economy class, probably the best in the business.  Thai Airways is pretty amazing.  Of course now the Thai Airways product is only available out of LA and EVA has gotten prohibitively expensive; the seats are around $2400 compared to $1400 four years ago.  It's hard to imagine how to get to Bangkok in some comfort without spending an arm and a leg.  I'm too tall and too old to travel coach on a plane for the better part of 20 hours.

As a Continental frequent flier for almost 10 years now I am excited about their partnership/merger with United as it will allow me to use miles to get upgrades to Bangkok.  As much as I really appreciate premium economy on such a long flight, let's face it:  nothing beats business class, but who can afford it?  $4-7000 depending on the carrier to go to Bangkok from NYC.  I keep hoping someone will sponsor me to go and do a food tour of SE Asia and talk about the food and my airline experience.  I'm very excited about Continental's new flat beds in Business; they would make a trip to Bangkok practically fun!

Anyway, I digress.  I just saw the new ads for Air New Zealand's new 777-300.  Air New Zealand has a world class product and is introducing many improvements with this new plane.  Most notable is the premium economy class which is featured in this hilarious and rather ribald ad.  It looks more like business then premium economy, and I love the food that is served in the ad - I wonder if they serve food like that on the actual plane?

I laughed out loud.

I think they are kind of genius.  Here is the one for coach:

And finally... how fucking cool!  A black livery on a major carrier.  I just want to go to book a ticket right now!  Don't you?