Capital Air to Wellington to Takaka, return

Capital Air is a small local operator who conduct scenic, charter and [from September to April each year], a scheduled Wellington - Takaka - Wellington service. The main aircraft is a Piper PA32R-301 Saratoga, fitted with comfortable club seating for the 45-60 minute scheduled flights. There's also a C172 available for more local scenics.

Today I got the opportunity to tag along and see what it is all about. I've never flown in to Takaka before, so it was a good opportunity for me to find out exactly where the aerodrome is in case I want to go for a visit some time! Lastly, I know just how scenic the Marlborough Sounds area is, and I wanted the chance to be able to relax a little, enjoy the view, and not have to worry about flying the plane while Chris [the pilot] did all the hard work.

The weather was fine - a perfect day for flying actually, although quite dull with some high cloud, so the pictures are not as good as they could be. I really want to get an opportunity to flying through the Sounds on a brighter day and just see what I can do with the camera.

Anyway, here are the photos. The first 3 are heading towards/in to Takaka, the other 2 are on the way home again. Top to bottom are:

An interesting cloud bank [or so I think!]
The Saratoga instrument panel
Short final approach to Takaka runway 18
At 5000' feet looking south over the Marlborough Sounds [x 2]



Thanks Chris and Capital Air for allowing me to pop along for the ride!

Cessna 402 and a Dash 8

No flying today [my wallet would not let me :-( ], but I did get a couple of interesting pictures. First was this Cessna 402c. ZK-VAD is registered to a Nelson address and was filling in for a couple of Capital Air sectors.

The remaining pictures are of an Air Nelson / Air New Zealand Dash-8. I like the first picture because of the rainbow appearing to the south after some light rain. The second shows the Dash-8 parking at... the RNZAF apron. What looked liked a fairly full plane-load of passengers then disembarked. I'm not sure what the occasion was and I was hoping for something more exotic :-)

Wellington Aero Club Aircraft

Here are the pictures of some of the lighter aircraft at the open day. Most of these are available for hire by Wellington Aero Club [http://www.flywellington.co.nz/] members, although the Saratoga is only used for Capital Air [http://www.capitalair.co.nz/] flights and I think perhaps the Beech 58 will be.

I forgot [!] to get any pictures of the Club's PA28 Warrior and Archer aircraft, and the Piper Arrow PA28-201 was away for the day.

Top to bottom they are:

2 x PA38-112 Tomahawks - the Club's primary trainers
Cessna C172
Mooney M20C
Piper Saratoga
Beech 58

A few more teaser pics...

OK, I can't resist it!

Here's a few more pictures from the open day... you'll have to wait for the rest though! As you can see from this sampler, there was wide support for this event from many of the operators either based at, or using Wellington International Airport.

Top to bottom are:

Air New Zealand B737
Lifeflight Metroliner SA227
Capital Air Piper Saratoga
Wellington Aero Club Mooney M20C
Wellington Airport Fire Engine
Vincent Aviation Beech B1900D
Helipro Jetranger II

Many more B737 pictures from the open day coming soon!

Enjoy!