Anna King Shahab flies with China Airlines from Auckland to Taipei, via Brisbane

The plane: An Airbus A350-900. Class: Economy.

Price: From $1121 return.

Flight time: Departing Auckland at 7.30pm, it took 2hr 55m to Brisbane, a one-hour transit then eight hours to Taipei to arrive just after 6am.

On time: A 15-minute delay leaving Auckland that thankfully didn’t result in a missed connection. How full: Almost full at the back of the aircraft, but I was lucky to have an empty seat beside me. Fellow passengers: From Auckland about 50/50 expat Kiwi punters alighting in Brisbane (I’m a champion eavesdropper, and the airline offers seriously good Aussie fares right now) and those continuing on to Taipei.

My seat: 72D — an aisle seat waaaay down the back. Check-in staff smiled sweetly as they ignored my requests for something further up.

Entertainment: A mix of English and Mandarin movies and TV, so comparatively less choice (for English-speaking me) than usual.

Food and drink: My general rule of ordering the native cuisine on any Asian airline met a hump in the road when the dinner menu’s “chicken rice” turned out to be chicken in a gloopy sauce with risoni (hey, that’s pasta — not rice!) and bland steamed veg. As a result I decided to sleep through breakfast but according to my travel buddies, I missed out on goodie: the roast duck noodles. The drinks selection

was fairly basic. There was a surprising highlight — the bread rolls were hot! One of my bugbears is the fact the bread rolls accompanying inflight meals are fridge-cold, served with …. cold butter, which means I have to pull out my little routine: slicing in half then warm up the roll on top of the foil-wrapped meal before buttering. But applause for China Airlines, who thought this one through.

Toilets: Clean, and although one of four toilets in the cabin was out of order, queueing wasn’t an issue.

Airport experience: Security at Auckland Airport was smooth, leaving me plenty of time to mooch around Duty Free. Transiting in Brisbane we were straight off the flight and through a security check before being allowed into the transit lounge, which seemed excessive and meant having to scull the contents of my just-filled stainless steel water bottle.

Would I fly again? Yes, but would happily forgo the rather forgettable meals and instead try to grab as much sleep as possible on this broken-up night flight. The Airbus A350-900 is comparatively comfy, even in Economy, so a good option for night flights.