Barrier Air Freighter Flights

Barrier Air have two major customers for its services to Great Barrier Island... The visitors to the Island and the locals. Always looking to improve its customer service for the Great Barrier Island residents, this week it started dedicated freight flights to the Barrier, largely to cater for the grocery boxes that go out to the island. Barrier Air's Grant Bacon was, as always, very obliging in answering some questions...

Are this a regular flight? If so how often will it operate? 

Yes it is a regular flight. We will start by doing it on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We might also end up doing it on a Wednesday due to the sheer volume.

Changing the Caravan to a freighter configuration means the seats need to stripped out and then put back in... how long does this take?

To take the seats out and load it it is about a half hour job which is a lot better than when we used to operate the flight with the seats still in it. 

Why are you having a dedicated load master on these flights? 

We carry the load master mainly because of the sheer volume. It is a big job to process it, load it and unload it at the other end.  The load master will then stay on the island and take payment for it from the customers and come back on a later flight.

Dedicated freight flights presumably give Great Barrier Island residents surety there box will arrive... How many boxes would you normally carry on a freight flight?

It can be as much as 100 boxes sometimes.

While your freighter flights might be full going out to the Barrier, I presume the return would be empty? 

The main issue with these freight flights is the empty leg back to Auckland. We do have some commercial customers on the island that send their product back to the mainland but it is inconsistent.