Destination found today....

After yesterday's two attempted departures on a Medivac flight, the Canadair CL600, N404HG, remains hangered at Execujet's Wellington hanger today. It was out for a brief time, but this may have just been to make way for the Gulfstream G650, ZK-KFB, which departed around lunchtime today. This flight appears to be a replacement for yesterday's failed attempts. As ZK-KFB was departing, N404HJG was being tucked away in the back.

My photos of ZK-KFB were not great, but here's one that I have tried to polish up a little...

404 - Destination not found!

[another title that might not make sense... oh well, congrats if you understand it!]

Today's interesting aircraft is this Canadair CL-600-2B16 Challenger, N404HG, registered to Chrysler Aviation, seen here departing and then arriving at Wellington. According to sources, this aircraft was conducting a medivac, including requesting priority for its first takeoff.

Unfortunately it had to return back to Wellington soon after takeoff. A while later it tried again, but again it had to return. It doesn't look like it declared an emergency, but I'm not sure why it had two attempts to get going before returning and parking up at the Execujet hanger. Hopefully everyone is OK.

Other pictures are of a Virgin Australia B737-8FE, ZK-PBK, still wearing the old Pacific Blue livery. lastly is a CTC Aviation operated Diamond DA42 Twinstar, ZK-CTM.

Dassault Falcon 50

Today's interesting visitor is this Dassault Falcon 50, VH-FOL, which I photographed departing Wellington. The aircraft appears to be based at Brisbane and looking at the Flightradar24 track, it may be heading back there [or another Australian airport]

Anyway, apart from that, it has been another windy day - hopefully it is nicer tomorrow!

It came Monday!

[yeah, sorry if the title makes little sense... but I'm not explaining :-)]

Today was the last of the Easter public holidays, and so being a nice day I spent most of it at the aero club. Speaking of a nice day, the weather has been better than forecast for most of the weekend - certainly the rain and southerly change has not as yet eventuated.

Anyway, I got another flight in today. Lance [passenger and honorary photographer] came along for the ride and in little over 45 minutes we had past over the entire Hutt Valley, across the Rimutaka ranges, down over Lakes Wairarapa and Onoke and back in to Wellington. Nice! Hopefully Lance has a few photos to share from the flight - if so I'll put some up in another post.

Meanwhile, here's the photo that relates to the title. ZK-DCM is a Piper PA34-200 Seneca, which is registered to Air Hawkes Bay Ltd [part of the Hawkes Bay & East Coast Aero Club]. The Seneca arrived today for a short stop before heading back to its Hastings base.

An Airbus and a King Air

Today's pictures are brought to you by a windy Wellington - not cold, not raining, just windy :-)

First up are two photos of a Royal New Zealand Air Force [RNZAF] Beech B200 King Air, NZ7123. Following that are two photos of one of Air NZ's Airbus A320-232 aircraft, ZK-OJQ.

The weather is still looking OK for tomorrow, so hopefully I get a second flight this weekend :-)

Even more surprisingly...

... the weather was good for flying today! This is despite the storms across many other places north and south of us. Wellington, it seems, has escaped the worst, which meant I got to go flying for just over an hour in the Club's Cessna 172N, ZK-FLT.

I must be getting enthusiastic, because I've booked myself in again on Monday afternoon [Easter Monday holiday here in New Zealand] :-). Here's hoping it's good weather for Monday also.

Somewhat surprisingly...

... the weather was much nicer than expected today! What wind we had even managed to reduce as the day went on, at least until the thunder and lightning started for a short time in the evening :-)

It almost goes without saying then that I am booked in for a flight tomorrow, when I'm sure that the weather will be rubbish... we'll see! At least I have a long weekend - it's the Easter break, so 4 straight days off work! Hooray!

I did manage to get a few photos from today. First up is a Piper PA34-220T Seneca, ZK-BJM, registered to Ridge Air of a Blenheim address.

Second are a couple of Air New Zealand aircraft - an Airbus A320-232, ZK-OJS and a Boeing 737-3U3, ZK-NGD. the Boeing of course, is one of very few "classics" left in the Air NZ fleet as it transitions across to A320's for their domestic operations.

Last up is a BAE Jetstream Series 3100, ZK-JSH, registered to Vincent Aviation, here in Wellington.

Oh well, here's hoping for good weather tomorrow! Happy Easter everyone!

Hamilton and back on Air NZ

This past week I have been working in the Waikato - in several towns and the main city of Hamilton. The plan was to fly up on Monday and back on Friday using Air NZ [Air Nelson & Mount Cook] in both directions. I'm not a fan of early morning starts, but with my flight departing at 7:05am, I was never going to get a sleep in...

The weather in Wellington that morning was pretty much cruddy. So much so, that it seemed that no aircraft were able to land. It was just as well our Bombardier DHC-8-311 had overnighted at Wellington. There was a short delay to allow others to try an land [they all missed and diverted] before we [a colleague and I] got going.

The arrival into Hamilton was nice. The skies were fairly clear, no fog, but starting to get warm. The rest of the week was hot and muggy - not much fun, but such is life.

We finished early enough late Friday morning and so after lunch, headed out to Hamilton Airport [ICAO code: NZHN] about 3 hours early for our flight. We weren't able to change to the earlier flight [the boss won't buy flexi tickets], so we got comfortable for a long wait. About 45 minutes later we were paged, and due to fog being forecast at Wellington, we were shifted onto the earlier flight after all! The only real difference being that we would have another Air Nelson DHC-8 flight back home [instead on a Mount Cook ATR72]. Nice!

Anyway, we headed home and landed about 30 minutes before the fog hit. Yay!

In short, a couple of nice flights, good work by Air NZ in getting us there and back and for shifting us to the earlier flight. After a week away though, I'm kinda happy to have my own bed again :-)

Anyway, pictures. These are all from Hamilton this afternoon. Top to bottom are:

Bombardier DHC-8-311, ZK-NEZ [my ride home] & ZK-NEQ [off to Christcurch] of Air Nelson. Air NZ
Piper PA31, ZK-MJF, registered to the Taranaki Air Ambulance Trust
Mitsubishi MU-2B-30, ZK-KOH, registered to Search and Rescue Services of Taupo

2014 Royal Tour of New Zealand

I guess most NZ-based plane watchers would have worked this out by now, but this coming week should be a very interesting times. If the royal tour is coming to a place near you, you might like to look out for the aircraft that will inevitably be involved.

Stuff.co.nz has details of dates and locations, and if you're in Wellington, there should be plenty of movements from the RNZAF Air Movements Apron during the week or so. Apart from arriving on an RNZAF B757 into Wellington [from Sydney], I do not have details of what aircraft will be involved in flying them to/ between other centres. I would imagine that the B757's would be doing most of the work though.

Unfortunately will be unable to get to Wellington Airport for most of the week... if anyone does see any interesting/ unusual aircraft that they are happy to share with the world, please email me [but it will take a few days for me to respond].

Another day detached from terra firma

After just over 2 months of no flying [I've been busy and then the weather hasn't always been cooperative] I got to go flying today. I decided to make it a dual flight so I could practice a few things and get some feedback. Today's aircraft was the Club's Cessna C172N, ZK-FLT.

It all went fairly well. I'm safe, just a little rusty. I managed a few turns, stalls, a forced landing, low flying and some circuits back at Wellington and I was all done in 1.2 hours. Not bad for flying out of Wellington - there were no ATC delays and the skies were clear and smooth.

I'll do a flight by myself next weekend just to smooth things out a bit :-)