I made two visits to Wellington Airport recently, on Thursday 24th and Friday 25th April. These visits being weekday visits afforded by a bit of annual leave (Thursday) and a public holiday (ANZAC day on Friday). I was hoping to catch some more interesting traffic and to some extent I think I did. Here are a handful of the 28 uploaded. Check out my photo stream for the rest.
There are now two operators using the Gippsland Airvan out of Wellington – and both nice and colourful. In addition to the SoundsAir example, this “Wings Over Whales” aircraft can occasionally be seen.
RNZAF Iroquois NZ3816 transited briefly on the Thursday, possibly to be involved in an ANZAC day flypast in Christchurch (as seen on TV!). It was also spotted in company with NZ3803 on Saturday by Rodney.
This Air West Coast Dornier 228 (seen here on the Thursday) was also spotted by Rodney on the Saturday meaning it has been hanging around a fair bit in Wellington.
After departing as shown here, it disappeared for a short while before appearing on the approach path. However, on early finals with gear down, the approach was aborted and we didn’t see him again in the remaining hour or so we stayed. Here you see the gear just tucking in as he goes overhead the runway threshold.
Metroliner ZK-POF is not a common sight, in my experience. I believe it is operated by AirWork but its colour scheme betrays its “origins”!
And finally, an “I see you!” shot of Air New Zealand’s (now) only non-standard colour schemed Boeing 737. Click on the photo to go to the Flickr page and then take a look at the large size. Anyone recognise him?
NIce pics. But some of these aircraft are more frequent visitors than you may think… ZK-VIR operates a daily scheduled service into/out of Wellington so can be seen every week, Monday to Friday at least. ZK-POF is a little rarer, but does seem to pop in fairly frequently. I’ve caught it there mid to late afternoon during the week fairly often.
Well, the point is I rarely get out there during the week. I have seen POF before myself, but not that often.
Nice photos! I especially like the Iroquois shot with the beaking waves in the background. Very nice.
By “Origins” you mean Origin Pacific?
Well if so, ZK-POF has never operated for Origin Pacific. It came to NZ and worked in the NZ post fleet before it was transfered into the airwork fleet.
The livery looks very much like a deritive of the origin pacific livery though doesnt it!
The NZ CAA website always helps me with aircraft rego details!
The 2 operators are the same! Sounds Air is the parent company of Wings over whales!
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The Air West Coast Plane hangs around the country alot! It spends most of its time in Greymouth! When I visited in July it was there all Tuesday! I spoke to the Aeroclub manager there and he commented that the airline are seemingly finding it hard to get passengers on their services and they were contemplating a Christchurch – Greymouth perhaps instead of Wellington. Air West Coast pulled out of the Greymouth – Westport – Wellington run earlier this year as they beleived it was to expensive to make the stop in Westport.