Extended North Shore Service

  

Barrier Air have announced a third daily flight between Great Barrier Island ↔️ North Shore for the summer. 

Over winter Barrier Air operates a reduced Great Barrier Island ↔️ North Shore that operates four days a week on Mondays, Wednesdays. Fridays and Sundays. From the 27th of November daily flights will resume, from the 19th of December twice daily flights and from the 26th of December thrice daily flights. These will depart Great Barrier Island at 8.00am, 10.50am and 4.00pm. The return flights will leave at 9.15am, 12.00 noon and 5.15pm. The flight takes 30 minutes.

Barrier Air has also announced a new multi-pass between Great Barrier Island and Auckland or North Shore. Each pass costs $1,550 and includes 10 seats (5x return trips). For more details see https://www.barrierair.kiwi/

North Shore again

North Shore on 29 August 2022

North Shore Helicopter Training's Robinson R22 ZK-HPT

Airbus Helicopters AS350 B3 ZK-HTS 

Guimbal Cabri G2 ZK-ICN

Sonex ZK-JQP

Sonex ZK-SXR

Robin R2160 ZK-TZF

Vans RV-9A ZK-VNS

Sunny skies at North Shore

North Shore plane spotting on 28 August 2022

A new photo for me was Alpi Aviation Pioneer 300 ZK-CJO 

Piper PA28-140 Cherokee ZK-DGH

Piper PA28-161 Warrior ZK-DXI

Cessna 180 ZK-EOH

Another new one... a couple of photos of Vans RV-12 ZK-ERV

Vans RV-8 ZK-EYT

Piper PA28-180 Cherokee ZK-FEL

Cessna 180 ZK-FRY

Eurocopter EC 130 T2 ZK-HEA

Aerospatiale AS350B Écureuil ZK-IIC

Cessna 172 ZK-MDX

Cessna 172 ZK-MED

Maule MXT-7-180A ZK-RLT

A new one in this colour scheme, Piper PA28R-200 Arrow ZK-RTE

The only Barrier Air Cessna 208B Grand Caravan I have yet to fly in, ZK-SDC

Yakovlev Yak-18T ZK-SSR

Beech A36 Bonanza ZK-TRC

Robin R2120 ZK-TZG

Robin R2120 ZK-TZH

Robin HR200 ZK-TZI

Robin R2120 ZK-TZL

Tecnam P2002 Sierra RG ZK-TZS

Cessna 172 ZK-WKT

Piper PA28-161 Warrior ZK-WWW

Another Airwork Freighter

 

A new one for me... Airwork's Boeing 737-3S1 ZK-TLE at Auckland on 24 August 2022... wouldn't it be nice to have a logo of some titles

Interesting new flights for Kaitaia

 

Barrier Air has announced additional Thursday flights to Kaitaia enabling business travellers from the main centres to have a whole day of business in Kaitaia and return on the same day. At present Barrier Air has two flights each week day between Auckland and Kaitaia, leaving Auckland at 11.00am and 6.15pm and leaving Kaitaia at 6.50am and 12.40pm

From the 20th of October there will be four flights on Thursdays between Auckland and Kaitaia instead of the two currently offered. 

The extended schedule will see a new morning flight leave Auckland at 8.00am to arrive in Kaitaia at 9.05am. The return flight will leave at 9.40am to arrive in Auckland at 10.45am. In the afternoon a new flight will leave Auckland at 2.30pm to arrive at 3.35pm. The return flight will leave Kaitaia at 4.00pm to arrive at 5.05pm. The timings enable to and connections from Christchurch or Wellington.

Barrier Air's CEO Grant Bacon said, We had a request from Wellington based business travellers to put a northbound morning flight on as a once off and then a south bound in the afternoon in order for them to do a day trip. We opened up the rest of the seats and they sold like hotcakes to other members of the public so we tested the market and it proves that there is demand. We will probably add another flight early in the week once we get the Thursdays rotations up and running. Kaitaia is really working well for us and the hard graft developing the route is paying off.

Barrier Air's Cessna 208 Grand Caravan ZK-SDB at Kaitaia on 5 April 2022

In the hangar...

Arriving back into Auckland on Tuesday I managed to get a glimpse into the Fieldair and Air Chathams hangars... In the Air Chathams hangar was ATR-72 ZK-MCU being readied for service. Meanwhile, in the Fieldair hangar were BN Islanders ZK-SFK and ZK-PIZ being readied for service with Island Aviation.  

BN Islander ZK-SFK at Auckland on 23 August 2022

Connecting Nelson and Marlborough

Three charter operators and Sounds Air are connecting Nelson to Marlborough during the road outages...

From the Air Kaikoura Facebook page

Air Kaikoura is excited to be offering our air services from Blenheim to Nelson return from Friday the 26th of August. We will be operating these flights 7 days per week or as demand requires. Our schedule and prices will be as follows. Adults $175 PP Children $150 or return for $270 PA Children $250 PC

Morning: Departing Blenheim (Omaka) 7.30 am, arrive Nelson 8am. Depart Nelson at 8.30am, arrive Omaka 9am.

Afternoon: Depart Blenheim (Omaka) 4.00pm, arrive Nelson at 4.30pm. Depart Nelson at 5.00pm, arrive Blenheim (Omaka) at 5.30pm.

Conditions, includes minimum of 4 passengers for the flight to take place. Carry on luggage only. We are also available for other charter inquiries and can carry freight on demand. Air Kaikoura/The Kaikoura Aero Club is a non profit organization, your funds help aviation in Kaikoura and beyond. Thank you for choosing to fly with us. Please call us on 0800247524 for further conditions and information, or email as at info@airkaikoura.co.nz

A whale watching company has pivoted to help people stranded while the two highways connecting the top of the south are out of action due to flood damage. Wings Over Whales is a Kaikōura-based company that normally takes passengers for scenic trips. But when the team realised the scale of flood damage during charters for Civil Defence at the weekend, they thought some direct flights between Nelson and Blenheim would help those stranded by the highway closures. The main route between the two centres, SH6, was severely damaged by slips and flooding when an atmospheric river of rain brought a four-day deluge to Te Tauihu. The alternative route SH63 was also damaged and Waka Kotahi said neither highway would reopen before next week. Wings Over Whales marketing and partnerships manager Krissy Griggs said they posted the idea on social media on Tuesday to gauge interest and were overwhelmed by the response. “The phones haven’t stopped, we’ve had lots of enquiries, lots of demand. There’s lots of uncertainty about when the roads will be opened. So it’s been great to be able to help.” Their GA8 Airvan was making return trips every day this week from Omaka Aero Club to Helicopters Nelson, and Griggs said that would likely continue until one of the highways reopened, and if the demand was there. They had tried to keep the ticket price as reasonable as possible as a service to flood-affected passengers, at $200 one-way or $300 return. The enquiries included young families that had become stranded in the wrong region over the weekend, businesses moving staff for work, people wanting to bring their older parents over, or even looking to transport cats and dogs, Griggs said. “This is not our first rodeo – about five years ago now we had the Kaikōura earthquake and we just went straight into recovery mode. So for us, seeing this situation [with highway closures] again, we saw that we could help.” As the company already had established connections with airfields around the top of the south it only took “a couple of phone calls” to set up this week’s flights, she said. Pilot Emily Wallace said the airfield at Omaka had been very busy this week with helicopters transporting officials around the region as well as chartered planes transporting passengers to Nelson. Among her passengers on Wednesday was a Nelson-based farmer heading home after visiting his farm in Rai Valley, managed by his children but which suffered extensive damage in the flooding. Sounds Air confirmed it would also put on direct flights on Thursday and Saturday evening. Sounds Air chief executive Andrew Crawford said he had considered putting on more direct flights between Nelson and Blenheim due to the highway closures, but he was waiting to see how Monday’s announcement went, as he thought it was possible State Highway 63 would reopen soon. Normally the company did not do direct flights “because most people just drive”, Crawford said. Passengers could also fly Blenheim to Nelson via Wellington.

Source : https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/129668701/whale-watching-company-puts-on-blenheim-to-nelson-flights

From the Pelorus Air Facebook page

Nelson road closures update:

Flights running daily, $200 per person each way.  Spaces still available as below:

THURSDAY 25TH

🛩0830 Nelson↪️Picton

🛩1500 Picton↪️Picton

🛩1600 Nelson↪️Picton 

FRIDAY 26TH

🛩0800 Picton↪️Nelson

🛩0945 Picton↪️Nelson

🛩1045 Nelson↪️Picton

🛩1200 Picton↪️Nelson

🛩1415 Picton↪️Nelson

🛩1500 Nelson↪️Picton

More flights on Saturday and Sunday available will post update tomorrow.

And from the Sounds Air Facebook page...

UPDATE✈️ 

We have added another BHE-NSN flight at 06:35 on Saturday 27th August. Booking is open for this flight on our website. 

We still have seats available on our NSN-BHE at 1915! 

Great News! 

We have 2 one off Direct Blenheim - Nelson & Nelson - Blenheim flights scheduled ready to go! You can book these flights on our website www.soundsair.com 

Flight times as follows ✈️ 

 • BHE - NSN Thursday 25th August at 1800

 • NSN - BHE Saturday 27th August at  1915

Pluses and Minuses

The first MINUS on the 23rd of August was this text...

Come on Air New Zealand ops... you had five hours to organise another aircraft if it is engineering especially when Gisborne is so far away and there are not multiple flight options. So there were no other options out of Gisborne and the four of us were looking at a six hour drive to Auckland. It seems today it is really easy to push the cancel button.

but then I had a phone call, Eileen and Andy offering us a flight to Auckland, the first PLUS...

This is not the first PLUS, but nonetheless a nice pic of Air Napier's Piper PA32 Cherokee 6 ZK-ELK enjoying the Gisborne sun before the courier run to Napier after 5pm.

But then the second MINUS... I was delighted to be able to get Piper PA46 Meridian ZK-UTE with its new "Andy Stevenson Aviation" titles...

But the MINUS was somehow, after taking my photo of ELK, I managed to switch my camera to manual focus resulted in blurred photos...

One of the others took this on their phone... he needs some lessons on aircraft photography, doors closed, side on

The PLUS was I noticed just as we were boarding... the last MINUS was that I forgot to rephotograph it in Auckland. Other than that the flight was all a big

PLUS

Back tracking at Gisborne... on the tarmac, Air Napier Piper Cherokee 6 ZK-ELK, Avia Air Charter Piper Navajo ZK-LTD, Air New Zealand Bombardier Q300 ZK-NEF and Air Gisborne Beech King Air ZK-SKL

Uniform Tango Echo rolling 14

Gisborne departure

Gisborne departure

Gisborne Airport on the climb to 27,000 feet

Waipaoa River

White Island in the distance... the highest point is called Mount Gisborne

White Island and Volckner Rocks to the left

Whale Island

Mount Maunganui

Motiti Island

Mayor Island 

Karewa Island and shipping waiting to enter the Port of Tauranga

Descent into Auckland

Pakihi Island with Waiheke Island in the cloud

Wairoa River and Whakakaiwhara Point

Wairoa River

Whakakaiwhara Point

Waikopua Creek and Howick beyond

Uniform Tango Echo cleared to land 23 Left

Again, a big thanks to Andy, Eileen and Rayden for a big PLUS