A guide for new players sampling Air New Zealand** to LAX.
Go to self-serve check in screen. Fill in details of self and flight. Scan passport. Get printed note saying to come back later. Note that signs say 20kg limit on check in bag; ticket says 23kg: I`m somewhere between the two.
Coffee
Come back to check in screen: answer same questions again. Answer lots more fun questions this time about various intentions including address of residence in LAX. Printed note spits out sending me to find an Air NZ Official. There appears to be one at the check in counter.
Queue
Get told by lovely Official that the spat-out printed note was actually directing me "to the Chinese man over there"... Waving vaguely in the direction of a stand up computer desk between the festering checkin screens.
Find "the Chinese man over there" who sighs, stands/me next to the stand-up computer desk and pulls out a printed and highlighted flow chart script to take check in passengers through, if they are going to the USA: commencing with the same questions I've been asked at Step 1, then the questions from Step 3. US Border protection seems to have outsourced its bureaucracy to "the Chinese man over there" who is playing his role with a weary straight if taciturn bat.
"The Chinese man over there" finishes his '20 Questions' and explains dryly that US Immigration made him do it. "They'll probably ask for a colonic irrigation for your next trip, Sir, and I hope I'm not the one to do it..."
Proceed to Security: a very speedy run through the ribboned maze, sort, scan and an explosives check from relentlessly cheerful "uniforms" who kept addressing me as: "Young Man", or "Dude" and:
Coffee. Then forage for food as Air NZ flight is billed as "No Food".
And so, goodbye for 7 weeks....
(** I still haven't forgiven Air NZ for the unprincipled stripping and shut down of Ansett Airlines and mass retrenchments. But a cheap ticket "on airlines you know" is a cheap ticket...)