A few weeks ago I noticed Metroliner ZK-LFT sitting outside the Air Chathams hangar... and it got to me wondering.
Since then I've been regularly checking the CAA register and today it confirmed a change of ownership to Air Chathams on the 14th of September 2015.
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| Fairchild Metroliner III ZK-LFT at Auckland on 25 March 2015 |
Since I saw LFT in the Air Chathams hangar I've been checking another website... but nothing has come up... yet!!!
UPDATE 25 SEPTEMBER - DEFINITELY JUST BEING USED FOR SPARES... MY THOUGHT THAT IT MIGHT BE USED FOR MRO-AKL JUST WISHFUL THINKING
Spare parts
ReplyDeleteSpare plane when they have CIC go in for maintanance
ReplyDeleteKaitaia vs Great Barrier Airlines?
ReplyDeleteLarger plane, 2 pilot
Kerekere vs Air NZ?
Benefit from any possible offloading from KT, and compete?
Standby for Whakatane?
Masterton again?
Extend the airport and be able to take a full load?
No.
DeleteNo.
No.
No.
^Agreed. I have it on good authority the Metro is just a spare they can deploy for their WHK and CHT runs. No way would Air Chathams compete with Air New Zealand.
ReplyDeleteWe will not be "deploying" it anywhere. It is currently being broken down into spares to support CIC as reliably as possible.
DeleteWill be destroyed once picked clean. ^_^
Good way to get that metro cockpit iv been after then is it???
ReplyDeleteIndeed, but someone has already beaten you to the punch.
Deleteif knowing what air chats is like, they are probably destroying the better of the two aircraft, just like they did to CID.............
ReplyDeleteCID was a good airframe but the cost to rebuild it would be more than buying another complete aircraft. Plus no use for a full freighter and a combi conversion would be alot of money again.
DeleteLFT is a light weight Metro III, MTOW is 2000lbs less than CIC and again Metro's are relatively cheap to buy. Parts are expensive, can get alot of value out of breaking one down into spares.
From my understanding CID was not in that great of a condition, i mean for one it sat at NZPM for atleast 10 year and moved all of 100m so it cant of been that good
ReplyDelete