Air New Zealand review by Brett 2015-04-09

Melbourne to Auckland 777-300ER I paid $20 extra to sit in a seat down the rear of the plane, where there are only 2 seats side by side. I'm glad I did as the people sitting in the 10 abreast seating looked crammed in and miserable. The seats and the aisle are so narrow, you can't help bumping into people when moving through the cabin. I opted to not pre-order a meal before boarding. Unfortunately the seat back ordering system was never enabled for the duration of the flight and the flight attendants never offered any pay-as-you-go meal or drink service. As a result, I was only ever offered 2 cups of water for the duration of the flight. To make matters worse, the inflight entertainment was interrupted for a number of minutes to allow one of the cabin crew to describe in detail the food offerings for those in the premium cabins and for those who had pre-ordered. This was actually quite irritating. One more thing, being seated down the rear of the plane behind the engines means it is VERY noisy. I measured 89dB on my phone app. You will definitely need a set of good noise cancelling headphones if you don't want to end up with ringing in your ears.