A "new" Jetstream and other airliners...

It was yet another awesome weather day at Wellington, so I headed out to get some photos. I wasn't disappointed with some pictures of a "new" British Aerospace Jetstream J32, a Beech C90A and a Boeing 737-8FE.

The Jetstream J32 is ZK-VAH and is registered to Vincent Aviation. I understand that this aircraft is used on charters for Eagle Airways when one of their Raythean B1900D's are not available... I'm sure that Vincent Aviation would be happy for you to charter it also :-) This aircraft was formerly ZK-ECN, and more recently, VH-OTH.

The Beech C90A, ZK-FDN, is registered to Garden City Helicopters, and is used as an air ambulance.

Lastly, the Boeing 737-8FE, ZK-PBM is registered to Virgin Australia Airlines (NZ). I imagine that it won't be long before the bright red paint scheme disappears, as the aircraft are gradually re-painted in the Virgin Australia scheme.

Four airliners and a rescue chopper

It was another day of fantastic weather in Wellington today... juts a pity that I could not afford to go flying, but my time will come :-). At least a number of other Club pilots got to go and commit aviation and have a lot of fun! As for me, I'm saving for a holiday, so I'm being just a wee bit careful with the expenditure, but I'm hopeful to have some photos from the other side of the world at the end of September :-)

Pictured today are the Westpac Rescue Kawasaki BK117 B2, ZK-HLF, registered to Helilink, followed by 4 airliners:

Raytheon 1900D,  ZK-EAH, registered to Eagle Airways

Boeing 737-33A, ZK-NGR, registered to Air New Zealand

Boeing 737-8FE, ZK-PBL, registered to Virgin Australia Airlines (NZ) - 2 pictures

Airbus A320-232, VH-VGQ, registered to Jetstar Airways

Enjoy!

Mainly lighties

It's easy to see the difference between the weather today and what we had last weekend! Last weekend was grey, gloomy and raining, today has been bright and dry.

Needless to say, there has been a lot of Club flying today, including Piper PA28R-201, ZK-EIF, which hasn't been flying for a couple of months. Also, we had a Canterbury Aero Club visitor, in the form of another Piper PA28R-200, ZK-DUY. The difference between the -200 and -201? The -200 has the slab wing [sometimes also called the Hershey wing, because it's shaped like a chocolate bar!], and the -201 has a more complex shape.

Other aircraft included Cessna 172R, ZK-NAD from Nelson Aviation College, and lastly, something a little bigger, Aerospatiale-Alenia ATR72-212A, ZK-MCP, of Mount Cook Airline with its plain white rudder.

Enjoy!

Flying the BAe 146 with Vincent Aviation

What follows are a couple of really neat videos from the cockpit of the Vincent Aviation BAe146-200, ZK-ECO, and includes from footage from New Zealand and Australia. These are awesome videos, especially the arrival into and departure from Queenstown!

The first of these was shared with me a few weeks ago, and I really enjoyed both of them. I hope you do also!

Windy and Wet in Wellington

The weather forecasts for this weekend were accurate [unfortunately]. Windy and wet is the order of the day. The temperature is at the forecast high of 15 degrees, and the surface wind at the airport has been up around 45-50 knots at times.

In short, a nice winter day :-)

Clearly there was not going to be much in the way of light GA flying happening today [although I did see a Cessna 208 Caravan take off], and Wellington airport, being rather dead on a normal weekend, was certainly fairly quiet today. However, to give you a flavour of what it was like, here are a few photos of aircraft that were operating.

Top to bottom are:

Boeing 737-8FE, ZK-PBJ, registered to Virgin Australia Airlines (NZ)
Boeing 737-838, ZK-ZQC, registered to Jetconnect [part of the Qantas group]
Bombardier DHC-8-311, ZK-NEQ, registered to Air Nelson
Aerospatiale-Alenia ATR72-212a, ZK-MCJ, registered to Mount Cook Airline
Airbus A320-232, ZK-OJF, registered to Air New Zealand [2 pictures]

and lastly, a picture of a Boeing 737 emerging out of the gloom on short final.

BTW - I should mention - these photos were taken early-mid afternoon today - yes, it really was that dark and gloomy!

Qatar Boeing 787 video

For something a little different, here's video of a Qatar Boeing 787 validation flight at the Farnborough airshow. What makes this different is that it includes imagery from a FLIR setup. What struck me was the lack of heat emanating from most of the aircraft, except the engines and APU, cockpit windows, pitot [or other] sensors and what might be one of the emergency exit doors on the right side [near the end of the video].

Thanks to Flightglobal for sharing the footage. Awesome!

Airliners at Wellington

It has been another fine day at Wellington with lots of aero club flying  happenning [including another successful PPL flight test]. The weather today has been pretty much perfect with little wind - just a bit of a chill in the breeze which is expected for mid winter :-)

Here are a couple of pictures of various airliners. Top to bottom are:

Bombardier DHC-8-311, ZK-NEC, registered to Air Nelson
Airbus A320-232, VH-VQT, registered to Jetstar Airways
Aerospatiale ATR72, ZK-MCC, registered to Mount Cook Airline

Enjoy!

Another good day for flying

Today was another good day for flying, with the Aero Club busy all day. I didn't get up myself, but it was good to see the rest of them enjoying themselves [especially a certainly student pilot who scammed a couple of rides in the back of Nanchang CJ6. I have a photo of him looking "guilty", but I promised I would not share it... we'll see :-)].

Pictures today are:

Cessna 172S, ZK-CTZ, registered to CTC Aviation Training
Piper PA28R-200, ZK-DJA, registered to a Nelson address
Boeing 737-3U3, ZK-NGD, registered to Air New Zealand

Itch scratched

After a couple of months of no flying, I managed to scratch that particular itch today. With the weather the way it was, I only managed to get some dual circuits in and then some solo circuits... maybe some stalls and forced landings next time... Anyway, it certainly felt good and I think I managed to do it without scaring the instructor [or passenger] too much :-) Oh yeah - there wasn't that much heavier traffic around today, I managed to get through circuits super quick.

A couple of other visitors include these two from CTC in Hamilton - A Diamond DA20-C1, ZK-CSD and a Cessna 172S, ZK-CTD.

Vincent's Lifeflight Jetstream J32

Finally, several weeks after it entered service, I have managed to get some pictures of Lifeflight's latest air ambulance, a British Aerospace Jetstream J32, registration ZK-LFW [formally VH-OTR]. I was looking forward to seeing this aircraft with its awesome livery - you'll see why when you look at the following images.

The livery was designed by Weta Workshops [as in Lord of the Rings and other great movies!], and the aircraft is operated by Vincent Aviation.

The final photo is a close-up of the left-rear of the aircraft showing the Vincent Aviation and Weta Workshop logos.

Hmmmm, it has been a while...

I took a look at when I last flew, and it turns out that it was around 2 months ago! That's a loooooong break for me, and although I did a fair amount earlier this year with Flying NZ Nationals and all that, it's little wonder I'm feeling like a have an itch I need to scratch!

I have a good reason in that I've been saving up for a big trip a little later this year, but I think that I might be in a position to do a bit of itch-scratching later this month or early July. I certainly hope so, as it's getting quite annoying turning up the the aero club just to hang around [as much fun as that can be] knowing I'm not going flying!

What is worse is that today would have been a really good day to head up and off into the sky! Oh well, hopefully I'll be able to jump into the Cessna 172 shortly. I think I'll take an instructor - just who do I select as my victim? :-)

Here's a picture from today of that itch-causing aircraft... Cessna 172, ZK-FLT from the aero club.

RNZAF Beech B200 Super King Air

With the weather the way it has been the last couple of days, it has been a quiet day down at the aero club. Today it was gusty cross winds. Wellington airport being the place it is, it's always quiet on the weekends anyway.

I did get to see the following however, parked up on the RNZAF apron and then taxying. I didn't get to see the departure, but from what I heard, it was very lumpy... Anyway, here is an RNZAF Beech B200 Super King Air, NZ1882.

Nowhere to land - TACA 110 - video

Here's a really nice video from Air Crash Investigation - one where not only was a Boeing 737 landed without engines, away from an airfield, but where everyone survived and the plane flew again!

Too nice not to share, and it says a lot for having both competent and experienced crew (not to mention awesome decision making and hand flying skills)!

Airline Android apps - Air NZ, British Airways and Easyjet

Updated 8 June 2012

I'm doing a bit of a trip later this year, and for the first time, I've got almost all my pre-holiday planning organised [or at least available] on my Android phone. OK, so only 9 flight sectors and 2 hotels, but still - much easier than being totally reliant on paper.

I'm mainly flying Air New Zealand [5 sectors], plus 1 sector on Virgin Atlantic, 1 on BA Cityflyer and 2 on Easyjet. It's a good time to do a quick comparison of the airline Android apps which I use to track my flights.

Firstly, I was surprised to not be able to find any sort of mobile app from Virgin Atlantic. No great drama, as I'm travelling on an Air New Zealand ticket, but still...

Air New Zealand
The Air New Zealand mpass app perhaps has a bit of a "head start" on the others, as it is the one I use for most of my flying. I really like the fact that it is simple to use, fast, looks good. What's more, for domestic flights, it contains a barcode to allow me to check in [not available for international flights], and a very easy to read summary of upcoming flights. 2-3 days out from a flight, I get "on time" information and my seat allocation. New Zealand airport terminal maps are a bonus, and it's easy to check up on my frequent flier points. Nice.

Air NZ's mpass application. Home page and My Flights page

There are a few other features [take a look at the first screen shot], and the only big thing missing is any ability to search for an book a flight. It's a big omission, but one I guess Air NZ will correct in due course.

British Airways
The British Airways app is ok but not great. I'm not quiet so keen on the user interface, but it is not too bad. There are more taps than what should be neccesary, but information is easy enough to find.  It does allow for online check in, but for some reason, it requires the booking reference number and passenger surname to complete! A bit silly considering the app has your booking details available. However, upcoming flight details are easy to find and read though.

British Airways My Booking page

The bonus compared to Air NZ's app is the ability to search for and book flights. Sure's it looks like it's just embedding a mobile version of the full website, but at least I don't have to change apps. A bit of further investigation indicates that if I had an Executive Club account, there might be more features, but this is not available in this part of the world. In fact, BA refers me on to Qantas [who don't have an Android app at all]

Easyjet
The final one I installed was the Easyjet app. First impressions were not great with an annoying startup animation and the bright orange blaring out, but once in the app, the options to book a flight, view booking or check flight status are all there. Selecting the booking information is easy, although if you have more than once flight booked, you have to scroll. One thing I dislike are the attempts to upsell on the booking detail screen. Not pleasant, but I suppose that is what is to be expected on a cheapo airline. The flight booking page is much better than the BA version - it was clearly designed for mobile from scratch. Just a pity about the constant annoying attempts to upsell left, right and centre...

Easyjet My Bookings page

A glaring omission is any ability to check in using the application.

Summary
All in all, I prefer the Air NZ app. OK, so maybe I'm a little biased since I do most flying on Air NZ, but the app provides me with clear, concise, flight information, domestic airport maps, up-to-date frequent flier points and a good UI ... with the addition of a booking page it would be about perfect [ok, a booking page, and the ability to do seat selection would be perfect!].

One more point - I tried to get hold of a Qantas app, just to compare, but they don't have an Android version available! Nuts...! :-(

So, what are your experiences? Agree with me? Disagree? Have a preferred app from another airline? Share a comment. Except perhaps you AgentK - I know what you think of Android :-)

Dassault Falcon 7X at Wellington

This was a nice surprise, with a Dassault Falcon 7X with Bermuda registration of VP-BZE, arriving at Wellington today. Very, very nice!

There were only two passengers from what I could see - a really nice way to travel! Now if only I could get a type rating :-)