[kiwiLB57]

I was meant to fly to New Zealand on 19 April to see the family.

It was quite an important trip as I hadn't been home from the UK back to NZ for two and a half years and there was a big reunion planned where I intended to tell them that I am being deployed to Afghanistan later this year.

I eventually flew out on 21 April after airspace was reopened late at night on 20 April. Good old Air New Zealand put on some extra "refugee" flights out of London Heathrow to get everyone home. They were one of the few airlines doing long-haul hours after the restrictions were lifted. They are a small airline and typically only do two flights a day from London so turn up with four aircraft ready to go was impressive. I was at home in Hertfordshire planning a train trip to Italy and a flight out of Milan via Singapore to get back home when the call came through from Air New Zealand staff in NZ: "Mate, can you get to Heathrow? We have a seat for ya!". Was a great call to receive.

Was a fun flight home, the airline scraped up some ex-steward management types to steward the planes and borrowed food off a collection of different airlines (mine was Lufthansa, and the person next to me got a BMI meal). They had also borrowed stacks of booze. Everybody got really drunk on the flight as they were so happy to be getting out of London (no offence London). We flew via LA and the American LA transit staff were very amused by a large bunch of drunk kiwis singing songs in the transit lounge.

When we got to Auckland (New Zealand) there were loads of Air NZ staff waiting for us playing guitar and singing and handing out chocolate bars to welcome us home. The airport was packed with local press and all the TV stations had news reporters there (three). Yours truly was on TV being interviewed about the trip. It was like we were on the last bird out of Saigon or something.

Cheers,

kiwiLB57