Air Chathams celebrated three months of flying to and from the Kāpiti Coast yesterday. More than 13,000 people have flown in and out of Kāpiti with Air Chathams in the past 90 days. More and more frequently the early morning service to Auckland and return evening service to Paraparaumu are full.
It takes a time to build a comprehensive service such as Air Chathams have introduced and they have been seen to do this successfully in Whakatane and Whanganui and not all the flights are as popular as the peak time flights. As Air Chathams build the Kāpiti air service up Metroliners, instead of the Saab, are going to be used on the morning flight, 3C 640 to Paraparaumu, which departs Auckland at 9.30am and the return flight, 3C 647 to Auckland, which departs Paraparaumu at 11.00am. The revised Metroliner schedule started yesterday.
It would be interesting to see if Wellington Airport's stats are able to highlight a corresponding shift of passengers on Auckland (to and from) flights. If it is a straight downward trend of 13,000+ passengers then that helps stave of congestion. It would also be interesting to know, if those figures are obtainable, as to whether they are a loss to Air NZ or Jet Star.
ReplyDeleteI calculate this out at an average load of 28 people per flight which I would think is fairly good
ReplyDeleteI remember a CHT-CHC flight that took over 3hrs in CIC Haha That was a LOOOONG flight. So just over an hour in a Metro down to PPQ will be survivable :D
ReplyDeleteFirst Metroliner service ended up being today, operated by ZK-CIC. Yesterday's service was a Saab 340 as 3C640 and 3C647 needed to operate via WAG as their aircraft went tech for the WAG service. Possibly more changes coming so keep an eye out!
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