Close to rarity

As most of you will know, Air New Zealand is in the process of shutting down a subsidiary, Eagle Airways, and disposing of it's fleet of Raytheon B1900D aircraft.

Over the next year, these B1900D's will become a rarity [and I expect followed by extinction] on the New Zealand aircraft register. This will of course be pre-dated by Air NZ ridding itself of all Boeing 737's in it's fleet, with the last B737 passenger flight to take place later this month.

Anyway, here are photos of two B1900D's - ZK-EAC and ZK-EAN.

Raytheon B1900D, ZK-EAC, operated by Eagle Airways/ Air NZ

Raytheon B1900D, ZK-EAC, operated by Eagle Airways/ Air NZ

A wee bit too windy again

Today dawned clear but still far too windy for any flying in the Club's light aircraft, with up to 22 knots of crosswind component. So much for my planned flight. Here's hoping for next weekend!

A number of the photos take today show this. Apologies for the first one - wrong ISO setting on the camera.... Top to bottom are:

Beech 1900D, ZK-EAC, Eagle Airways Ltd [part of the Air NZ group]

Boeing 737-838, ZK-ZQD, registered to Jetconnect [part of the Qantas group]

Bombardier DHC-8-311, ZK-NEU, registered to Air Nelson Ltd [part of the Air NZ group]

Flying competition - judges and other aircraft

In this final post from the regional comps, I have a number of "other" aircraft - visitors not directly associated with the comps, as well as pictures of two groups of some of the hardest working people in a competition - the judges. In this case, we have judges on the bombing grid and aeros judges.

Other aircraft are:

Diamond DA40, ZK-MTI, registered to Massey University
Raytheon/ Beech 1900D, ZK-EAC, registered to Eagle Airways departing on their scheduled flight
Jabiru J160, ZK-CCG, registered to a Palmerston North address
TL TL-2000 Sting, ZK-STG, registered to a Palmerston North address

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhh!

No, that heading is not a typo :-(

Having not flown for almost 2 months, due to weather and aircraft unavailability, I was really looking forward to taking a flight tomorrow... but... the aircraft is still away... hopefully next weekend, otherwise I'm going to have to seriously look at getting back into a Piper PA38-112 Tomahawk, or maybe getting a rating on a Beech C23 Sundowner.

My BFR [Biennial Flight Review] is due later this month, but I'm tossing up whether to do it before I go on holiday, or afterwards... I guess as much as anything, it will depend on the availability of the aircraft... Oh well. Today's picture is a Beech/ Raytheon B1900D, ZK-EAC registered to Eagle Airways Ltd landing on runway 16 at Wellington. Enjoy!

Final pre-Christmas post from Wellington

Well, it's Christmas Eve, and we were let out of work a little earlier today, so I popped down to the Aero Club for a short time. It has been a windy day, and worse still, there's been up to 28 knots crosswind reported on the ATIS. No flying for the Club today!

Getting roped in to check on some aircraft in our "new" hanger meant a chance to get some photos while I was there.

Top to bottom are:

Eagle Air/ Air NZ Beech 1900D, ZK-EAC showing how to land in a crosswind...!

Mount Cook Airline/ Air NZ Aerospatiale ATR72, demonstrating the cross wind at low level

Air New Zealand Boeing 737, ZK-NGG taking off

Air Nelson/ Air NZ Bombardier, ZK-NFB taking off

Merry Christmas everyone!