RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31656, 17 April 1968, Page 16

RANDOM REMINDER

FLY NORTH, WITH N.A.C.

If there’s one thing one must admire about internal air travel in New Zealand, its the cool efficiency of the trim young ladies who sell you the tickets, who tell you at the airport how long your flight has been postponed, and who minister to your wants if and when the flight takes place. It is only very occasionally that these handsome Homers nod. But when they do, it can cause chaos. There was a Christchurch man who flew to Wellington on business, and who discovered that his return flight ticket was not what he had required. They were full of apologies and corrections, and so off he

went, when his flight number was called, to board his aircraft. About the time the aircraft engines were being* run up at the end of the runway he heard the hostess say something for the benefit of “those passengers proceeding to Auckland” ... they had given him a Christchurch ticket, but the flight number was for the Auckland trip. His attempts to explain this to the hostess were at first met with polite disbelief, and he felt as if he should affirm that he was neither drunk nor imbecilic When his position was explained, it was almost too late. But the hostess just had time to confer with the pilot

before he took off. and so they wheeled off the runway and chugged back towards the terminal building. For the passenger, it was a moment of much relief, touched with a brief delusion of grandeur, as officials and workers moved out to meet the plane . . . where, he wondered, were the fire engine and the ambulance, and the police keeping back the horrified crowds? It would have been quite a pleasant business having all that V.I.P. treatment, had he not discovered, on his return to Harewood, that he had left his car there just 24 hours earlier, securelylocked, with the lights on.