{"id":168815,"date":"2025-12-05T03:23:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T03:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/168815\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T03:23:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T03:23:08","slug":"air-new-zealand-synthony-party-plane-turns-auckland-to-sydney-trip-into-inflight-rave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/168815\/","title":{"rendered":"Air New Zealand Synthony party plane turns Auckland to Sydney trip into inflight rave"},"content":{"rendered":"

The knees-up began well before wheels up: Auckland Airport\u2019s Gate 18 was decked out, setting the tone for what ZM host and flight MC Clint Roberts later promised to be \u201cthe most epic weekend of your life\u201d.<\/p>\n

Synthony musical director Dick Johnson<\/a> DJd in front of a sparkling silver wall, Air NZ staff passed canapes around on trays and a beverage station of AF Drinks non-alcoholic cocktails welcomed sequin-clad travellers.<\/p>\n

Stepping off the travelator into a crowd dressed for a disco rather than the Customs queue, one passenger was heard saying \u201cIt\u2019s like a full-on festival, but we\u2019re at the airport!\u201d<\/p>\n

Dry ice billowed around a doughnut wall and an AI-assisted roaming photobooth allowed revellers to choose their Synthony personality. Two violinists joined Johnson and got the passengers dancing. When an announcement was made that a mechanical requirement (a tyre replacement) meant a short delay in boarding, no one seemed to notice.<\/p>\n

\"EveryoneEveryone on board got into the clubland spirit. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n

Once travellers were on board, glow sticks, virgin mango margaritas and branded lanyards awaited on seats. One passenger, wearing a T-shirt emblazoned Glitter Fairy, stood with a tube of sparkling highlighter in hand, offering to embellish the faces of passers-by.<\/p>\n

In row 1, captain David Elmsly was uniquely positioned to welcome people aboard the party plane. Elmsly is one of the founders of Synthony and has been an Air New Zealand<\/a> pilot for more than 20 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cFlying a plane and organising Synthony, they might sound like totally different things, but they\u2019re kind of very similar. You actually need to be super organised to make a show like this work, because there\u2019s so many elements,\u201d Elmsly said, calling the flight a \u201csurreal, full-circle moment\u201d.<\/p>\n

With all phones switched to flight mode, the plane swapped to fun mode. Cruising at 32,000 feet, a familiar chime rang through the cabin, signalling the seatbelt sign had been turned off. It was quickly followed by a funky trill as musician Lewis McCallum began grooving down the cabin, squeezing past the trolley delivering pies, belting out notes on a clarinet. <\/p>\n

Johnson set the rhythm of the flight and Australian Idol star Emily Williams paraded in the aisles, delivering rousing renditions of electronic hits including Basement Jaxx\u2019s Good Luck and Rihanna\u2019s We Found Love to an audience that included a hens\u2019 party, loud lads\u2019 trips and members from Synthony\u2019s production company Duco Events.<\/p>\n

About 40 minutes out of Sydney, around the time the plane ran out of alcohol, McCallum and Matty-O staged a saxophone battle, starting at opposite ends and meeting for a honking standoff in the middle.<\/p>\n

After the display of \u201cbig sax energy\u201d, MC Roberts told the crowd: \u201cYou have never, and may never see that on a plane again people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Synthony will play for 2500 people at the Sydney Opera House forecourt tonight, but the spectacle became all the more immersive in the confines of the high-altitude concert venue \u2013 an Airbus A321neo. The floor-filling electronic hits spilled out from every curve of the cabin, thanks to an ambitious set-up in which overhead cabins opened to reveal speakers positioned throughout the plane.<\/p>\n

Grace Blewitt, Air NZ\u2019s general manager of global brand, said countless hours of testing had gone into making sure they could pull the four-hour flight off from a technical and safety aspect.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re pretty sure it\u2019s a world first\u201d.<\/p>\n

The airline thinks it was worth it, to support a Kiwi-born programme that\u2019s now on to the world stage. <\/p>\n

\u201cSynthony is just an outstanding formula. And it\u2019s just something a little bit different. We kind of like to be on the edge of things where they\u2019re a little bit new, a little bit unique … finding their footing on the world stage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blewitt said concert and music events are important to the airline business and its customers because they\u2019re travel opportunities in the \u201csweet spot\u201d, the \u201cintersection between music, culture, something a little bit unique\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cSynthony in the Sky sold out in six hours,<\/a> that tells us people are really looking for those moments of connection, and music is a really strong shortcut to that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Shapeshifter'sShapeshifter’s P Digsss brought the party from the front of the plane to the back. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n

The emotional connection between sound and scenery was reinforced in the lyrics projected by Shapeshifter\u2019s P Digsss, who bopped the length of the plane, singing hits and bolstering the mood with calls of \u201cNZ1331 let\u2019s go\u201d and \u201cyes crew, yes crew!\u201d<\/p>\n

Introducing a Shapeshifter track from 2013, the frontman said, \u201cThis is a little one called Monarch, we wrote this in Berlin, when we were missing home, it\u2019s our love song to Aotearoa.\u201d<\/p>\n

A quintessential party anthem, Darude\u2019s Sandstorm, was meant to close the show \u2013 but requests for an encore echoed down the rows, a jolly chorus asking for a \u201cone more song, one more song\u201d. <\/p>\n

Digsss was more than happy to oblige.<\/p>\n

Soon afterwards, the crew asked for window shades to be raised for landing, exposing daylight outside. It wasn\u2019t unlike the feeling of spilling out of a nightclub, only to be greeted by the sobering sunrise.<\/p>\n

\"SynthonySynthony tapped some of their best performers, such as Emily Williams and P Digsss, for the chartered flight. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n

The sky-high spectacle was an unexpectedly exciting experience for New Zealand-born Theo, who had been transferred on to the flight at the last minute, unaware it was a chartered party.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had no idea any of this was happening until I turned up to the gate and there was a DJ and they were giving out drinks.\u201d<\/p>\n

A member of the Air New Zealand marketing team swiftly welcomed him into the party, rustling up two VIP concert tickets for the Sydneysider. <\/p>\n

\u201cHappy days!\u201d Theo laughed, taking a picture or two of the scenes unfolding around him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The knees-up began well before wheels up: Auckland Airport\u2019s Gate 18 was decked out, setting the tone for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168816,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[68,51,5837,109555,12974,30445,18836,3011,35487,11551,99463,296,4960,117,111,43,139,69,4762,29459,15026,109554,109556,109557,1734,108041,61,1315,32951,109558,80],"class_list":["post-168815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-air","tag-auckland","tag-battle","tag-birthdays","tag-change","tag-classics","tag-club","tag-four","tag-hens","tag-hours","tag-inflight","tag-into","tag-live","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-party","tag-passengers","tag-plane","tag-rave","tag-saxophone","tag-speedy","tag-sydney","tag-synthony","tag-to","tag-trip","tag-turns","tag-tyre","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168815\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}