Air NZ New York-bound flight diversion leaves Kiwi teen in ‘dead' airport at 2am - and no word on where to stay
A Kiwi teen travelling overseas alone for the first time found herself at a 'dead' airport at 2am after stormy conditions forced her Air New Zealand flight from Auckland to New York to land just outside Washington DC.
And despite Air New Zealand saying it was trying to sort accommodation
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NZ Herald
2 days ago
- NZ Herald
Annabel Langbein, Peta Mathias and Anne Batley Burton on their double lives in France
Private investigator Julia Hartley Moore on the balcony of her new apartment in Birarritz. Another recent arrival in France is private investigator Julia Hartley Moore, who moved into her new apartment in Biarritz, on the Basque coast, in May. Former Black Cap Adam Parore and partner Libby Price own a 400-year-old chateau in Bordeaux, and fashion designer Dame Trelise Cooper has been spending summers in France with husband Jack for the past 15 years, at their house in Toulouse. Langbein and two other Kiwi bon vivants talk about what it's like to live with a foot in both worlds. ANNABEL LANGBEIN, food writer Wānaka food writer Annabel Langbein is enjoying her first summer in France, where she and husband Ted have bought a second home in the Dordogne region. Fatty edible dormice (glis glis, to call them by their scientific name) are a delicacy in Slovenia and Croatia. Apparently, the ancient Romans snacked on the rodents with a drizzling of honey and poppy seeds. But when food writer Annabel Langbein and her husband Ted found a nest of them living in the pantry cupboard of the house they'd just bought in France, she was horrified. 'I thought, 'Oh no, I'm not eating that!'' she says. 'They're the size of a small possum and quite fierce. So that was alarming.' The wildlife in New Zealand has never seemed so benign. When they arrived three months ago to spend their first summer in St Aubin de Cadaleche, a tiny village in the Dordogne region, the floor of the house was carpeted with dead stink bugs that had emerged from winter hibernation. A few weeks later, a pine marten (a larger version of a stoat) came down the chimney and made such a mess they had to throw out a couch and replace the carpet. Over the past three months, Annabel Langbein and husband Ted have been hard at work bringing the house and its extensive grounds into shape. Outside, a family of snakes is nesting in the garden, and the summer soundscape of cicadas is interspersed by a chorus of giant frogs that Langbein likens to the sound of strangled magpies. Of course, she's loving (almost) every minute of it, settling into a new rhythm that includes frequenting the local markets. 'I have my favourite growers – that lady does gorgeous beetroot, that man does nice eggs, and that person over there grows lovely peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers. Then there's a man who does incredible duck. And I am a duck slut,' she says, with a laugh. 'We both can't believe how at home we feel here. Even doing simple things feels like an adventure, so you wake up with a sense of excitement because you don't know what the day will bring.' Over the past 30 years, Langbein had come to know this southwestern corner of France during regular visits to her close friend and mentor, Daniele Mazet-Delpeuch, a famed chef who died in 2024. Annabel Langbein with French chef Daniele Mazet-Delpeuch. After looking at dozens of properties that weren't quite right, she and Ted bought Le Brugeau last year. Situated about an hour and a half from Bordeaux, the six-bedroom home combines two adjoining limestone barns, with a self-contained guest apartment, the Porcherie, that was once the farm's piggery. Since arriving in May, Langbein has been cataloguing their progress in weekly social media posts – from the hard slog of getting the house and grounds into shape, to trawling the local produce and bric-a-brac markets, and exploring the Chemin d'Amadour, an ancient pilgrim route that runs through their land. Unlike the extensive garden at her home in Wānaka, which has inspired so many of her seasonal cookbook recipes, Langbein is taking a much more low-maintenance approach here, thanks to the affordable organic produce that is so readily available. 'In the last month or so, everyone's been getting green walnuts to make walnut wine. People make their own confit and preserve their own foie gras. 'Go to the hardware store and they'll be selling fresh bread, fresh chicken, fresh duck and all these different wines. It's so much part of their culture.' Wānaka food writer Annabel Langbein's home in the Dordogne region, where she's spending the Northern Hemisphere summer. The airport at Bergerac, their closest town, is only a 15-minute drive away and has direct flights to London, where their son Sean lives. Daughter Rose, who has collaborated with her mother on several cookbooks and co-authors a weekly newsletter, is based in Portugal. Next month, Langbein and Ted head home to Wānaka, which sits at almost exactly the same latitude in the Southern Hemisphere as Saint-Aubin-de-Cadaleche does in the north. Exploding with spring growth, the garden will need their attention, but Langbein isn't happy about missing the main truffle season in France, which runs from the end of November to February. 'At some point, I've got to be here for that.' ANNE BATLEY BURTON, the Champagne Lady Anne Batley Burton at one of her favourite restaurants in Le Cannet-des-Maures, near her villa in the Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur region of southeastern France. When Richard Burton asked her to marry him (no, not that Richard Burton), Anne Batley was already wearing a stunning diamond on her finger and decided she didn't need another one. So he gave her a swimming pool for the house she'd recently bought in France as an engagement ring instead. 'He said, 'Well, I can't compete with that' – the one I already had,' she says, wiggling her finger. 'We've been married for 25 years.' Batley Burton, who starred on the Real Housewives of Auckland reality TV series in 2016, has come home early this year from her summer residence in Provence to stand on the C&R ticket at the local body elections in October. Known as The Champagne Lady, she imports Champagne Jacquart and a range of French wines, hosting private tastings. Through her charity, the NZ Cat Foundation, she also houses some 400 rescue cats at the 'Pussy Palace', her country estate in Huapai. In June, she broke her shoulder after being accidentally hit by her husband's car in the driveway of their city home in Parnell, trying to stop a roaming cat from running on to a busy road. Villa Domaine Des Abeilles, the hilltop property Bartley Burton bought in a half-finished state 26 years ago. Uncomfortable as it's been, the injury has barely slowed her down, judging by the string of photos and videos she's shared on Instagram from her latest stay at Domaine Des Abeilles, her hilltop villa in Le Thoronet. Whether it's on her terrace, overlooking the vineyards that carpet the Argens valley below, or dining at a favourite restaurant in one of the surrounding villages, she's typically seen with a glass in hand – and often dancing in a fabulously floral dress and sky-high stiletto shoes. 'What I love is that I feel more relaxed there,' she says. 'In a way, it's like going back in time.' Batley Burton has had a penchant for la vie francaise since she began learning French at a private school for young ladies in Auckland when she was 5. In her late 20s, she met the first of a string of French boyfriends and lived on and off in France for many years, renting villas in different parts of the country before deciding to buy a place of her own in the late 90s. The day before she was due to fly back to New Zealand, after a fruitless search, she was shown one last property that had been left unfinished when the owner struck financial problems. 'So off we went along this windy little chemin [road] about 10 minutes from Lorgues and then up this goat track, bombity, bombity, bom. 'The house was a concrete block, surrounded by clay. Upstairs, it was all closed off and in a state of disarray. But the view was to die for. I just fell in love with it.' Batley Burton with husband Richard, and (below) enjoying the summer truffle season at Chez Hugo in Seillans. The following year, she met Richard back in New Zealand. The couple spent the next decade gradually bringing the three-bedroom villa up to scratch, and Batley Burton says he loves France as much as she does. The swimming pool, a priority when they began renovations, is right outside their bedroom on the ground floor. 'We just open the shutters, walk out and dive in,' she says. 'Well, I get in and dog paddle with my hat on, my dark glasses and a glass of Champagne. That's me in the pool.' PETA MATHIAS, gastronomad Peta Mathias with her local fishmonger, Philippe, in the medieval town of Uzes in southern France, where she spends the Northern Hemisphere summer. To misquote Mark Twain, reports of Peta Mathias abandoning her 'beautiful life' in the south of France have been greatly exaggerated. It's true that her loft-style home in the sun-drenched medieval town of Uzes is on the market, but French real estate agents are notoriously laissez-faire and right now, she has no intention of letting it go. 'When I decided to sell the house, I was sick, I had a major problem with a neighbour, and I'd also had a major drain problem, so there was black sludge all over the downstairs bathroom,' she says. 'I just threw my hands up and I thought, 'Dang this, I can't stand it.' Now I'm not sick any more and all the other problems have been resolved. 'This is what always happens, you see. I slowly get back into my French life, which is so different from my New Zealand life, and I'm happy again. I can't give this up – it's too special.' Peta Mathias (left) in Paris with her sister Keriann in 1982, not long after Peta had moved there to become a chef. A cook, author, tour guide and self-described gastronomad, Mathias began her love affair with France in 1980, when she moved to Paris and opened a restaurant – frequented (according to her 2016 memoir Never Put All Your Eggs in One Bastard) by 'left-wing intellectuals, arms dealers, local artists and philandering husbands'. For the past two decades, she's divided her life between Auckland and Uzes, in the Occitanie region near Nimes, where her cooking classes begin with a trip to the local market. Famous for its wine and olive oil, the Mediterranean town is also a handy base for the 'culinary adventures' she hosts in Spain, Italy and Portugal (next year's schedule includes a luxury shopping tour of India). Peta Mathias with a cooking class group after a visit to her local market in Uzes. It all sounds absolutely fabulous – and, mostly, it is. But Mathias, now in her mid-70s, is refreshingly candid about the challenges of this life that she's chosen and the sacrifices it has required. 'I gave up husbands and children so I could live this double life,' she says. 'It's very expensive, it's very disruptive, and I'm constantly dealing with dramas, so you have to be resilient. 'But I knew quite young that I wasn't meant for husbands and children and a stable life and a stable job and living in the same house. I wanted excitement, adventure and romance, and that never stopped. Most people get sensible and grow out of it. I never did.' Blasts of colour and eccentricity punctuate Peta Mathias's loft-style home, a 'secret oasis" down a hidden alleyway. One of the enchanting things about the culture of southern France is an acceptance of imperfection, says Mathias. 'You see it in the architecture, design, cooking, their acceptance of foreigners.' Not to mention their saucy sense of humour. 'I like French people. I like that they're snappy. I like that they're impatient. I like that they think they have the best culture in the world. I like their self-confidence, because we're so shy in New Zealand. We never blow our own trumpet.' Mathias heads back to Auckland next month for the launch of her new book, It's Been Six Weeks Since My Last Confession, a collection of 'scurrilous' essays due out in mid-October. The view from Peta Mathias's terrace bedroom in Uzes, where she often works on her computer sitting up in bed. Long-haul travel is becoming more tiring, and she accepts that one day a hard choice will have to be made – which is why her eclectic, three-storey apartment is still officially for sale. 'It's hilarious, the [real estate] agents do nothing in France. The market isn't particularly buoyant at the moment, and it's going to be a hard house to sell because it's unusual. So I'm just gonna let nature take its course.' Joanna Wane is an award-winning senior lifestyle writer with a special interest in social issues and the arts.
Otago Daily Times
5 days ago
- Otago Daily Times
Oar-some opportunity in DC for Canterbury rower
Sienna Skilling of Ashburton is off to Washington DC on a four-year scholarship. PHOTO: TONI WILLIAMS Ashburton rower Sienna Skilling is heading to the United States capital on a full four-year rowing scholarship. She will study towards a Bachelor of Arts in psychology and criminal justice at George Washington University in Washington DC and compete for the university in the rowing eights. The 18-year-old was looking forward to studying in the capital city but most excited about taking her rowing to the next level. 'The facilities they have there are like nothing compared to here. We get our own nutritionist, our own trainer, our own physio, so just having access to all that will be pretty cool.' The full scholarship covers tuition, rowing, housing and food costs. She will live in the halls of residence for the duration of her time there. There are also a few attractions to check out in the city. 'There are lots of monuments and museums. It's very historical, with obviously the White House as well.'' Sienna, who has never visited the US before, leaves next week and will be accompanied on the journey by her father, Justin and his partner Emma. The distance between the US and home was a concern and getting back into formal education, she said. Since leaving Ashburton College last year, she had worked at signs and design company, Juice, and completed a rowing season with Avon Rowing Club in Christchurch. 'I went there because it's the biggest club in New Zealand so they've got lots of eights, which is what I will be rowing in America. So I wanted to get a feel for that.' She also trained alongside the New Zealand under-22 women's team rowing at Lake Hood with national coach Justin Wall. And has had a training plan from the university which she has been doing for the past eight weeks. It involved urging (rowing machine), weight training and isometrics workouts with body conditioning such as push-ups. Sienna Skilling started rowing at age 13, when in year 9 at Ashburton College. She loves the synergy needed in the sport. 'It's very cultural, you're in a boat – with however many – and you need to be like one. 'It's very (fulfilling) as well. You see hard work pay off.' Sienna's hard work saw her win bronze in the club pair at the New Zealand secondary school national rowing championships in February last year. Then messages started coming in from coaches watching the races. Sienna Skilling in action during pairs racing. PHOTO: SUPPLIED Being headhunted was an unfamiliar experience. She eventually signed up with Kiwi Athletes Agency who put together her education and rowing results and got her interviews with prospective universities state side. 'George Washington was the first one that said they would give me a full scholarship,' she said. It was too good an offer to turn down. Sienna believes she could be the first Kiwi rower at the school but would not be the only international this year with others from Australia, Italy and Germany. 'It will be good to have different people from different countries.' She would, however, be the only international in her rowing year group. 'There were originally three of us they were deciding between, then the head coach over there, talked to my school coach (Justin Wall) here. 'He obviously said a few good things, which was nice.'
Otago Daily Times
5 days ago
- Otago Daily Times
Engine issues continue to affect Dunedin flights
Global engine maintenance issues affecting Air New Zealand's fleet and Dunedin travellers are not expected to be resolved until 2028, the Otago Daily Times can reveal. Air New Zealand chief executive Greg Foran told the ODT yesterday it was "still about two plus years away" from "getting on top" of the engine issues. He shared the news after speaking with the chief executive of international aerospace manufacturer Pratt & Whitney earlier in the day. "It's unfortunate because we've already had about two years of it, but it's a tough problem to solve and there are many factors that are involved in it." In July 2023, Pratt & Whitney disclosed a condition affecting the maintenance plan for the geared turbofan jet engine fleet. Mr Foran previously said that, while the maintenance issue did not pose a safety issue, this had caused the airline to revise its flight schedule. Since late February, it has been using a 68-seat ATR-72 turboprop plane instead of the roomier 171-seat Airbus A320 on its morning and evening flights between Dunedin and Wellington — meaning the first flight of the day arrives in Wellington 50 minutes later than it did before. Mr Foran yesterday said the engines on about half of its Airbus fleet were bought during a period where a batch of "contaminated metal" was used. About 1200 engines were queued up waiting to be checked, which had created a backlog. "We're a bit unlucky. We just happened to purchase engines during this period. "It'll work its way through. They're safe but they need to be checked and hopefully by about 2028 we think we should be through." When asked if there could be further changes to domestic flight schedules and capacity, Mr Foran said there "probably will, but hopefully not as much as it has been as we work through these issues". He empathised with Air New Zealand's customers and the impact on them. "We're over half way. I wish it was going to be fixed by Christmas. It won't, but it will get fixed. "And as soon as those planes are available to come back, then they will." An interim report from Dunedin Airport earlier this year said domestic seat capacity remained limited due to Air New Zealand's ongoing fleet challenges, and it did not anticipate any "meaningful improvements" in the airline's capacity until late 2026. Chief executive Daniel De Bono said the engine issues affecting Air New Zealand's fleet, and many other airlines globally, were easing but remained outside of both the airport and Air Zealand's direct control. "We remain focused on working with Air New Zealand and our other airline partners to grow air capacity from Dunedin. "The aviation sector regularly faces challenges like this and the key is to work collaboratively through them." The engine-related domestic capacity constraints had reduced available seat capacity and limited the airport's ability to grow in the short term. It was a "dynamic situation" not isolated to Dunedin or New Zealand. As a global supply chain challenge, the airport had taken a conservative approach in its forward planning to account for the uncertainty, Mr De Bono said. "We also expect further changes to the domestic network as Air New Zealand navigates the [engine] issues and softer domestic demand. "Shocks like this happen in aviation, but the medium to long-term growth path generally remains steady." Business South chief executive Mike Collins said its main concern was maintaining reliable air connectivity in the region. "Flights are critical for business, tourism and freight — the reality is that ongoing constraints risk impacting local growth. "We encourage Air New Zealand to keep regional centres front of mind in any schedule changes." While the engine issues were complex and global, uncertainty around flight availability hurt businesses' confidence, Mr Collins said. Every cancelled flight or reduced service chipped away at business confidence and reliable services were key to unlocking economic opportunities for Dunedin and the South. "Businesses rely on certainty to make decisions — and right now, there's a real lack of it when it comes to regional air connectivity. "That creates challenges not just for planning travel, but for investment, growth and confidence in the region."
