3rd Level New Zealand: First flight of 2023

02 January 2023

First flight of 2023

I had to make a day trip to Great Barrier Island for so my first flight of 2023 was with Barrier Air to Claris taking GB587 which was flown by Alex in Cessna 208 Grand Caravan ZK-SDD. What a great way to start the New Year.

One of the things I have been enjoying on my flying to and from the Barrier of recent times is discovering the islands of the beautiful Hauraki Gulf...

Lining up 05 at Auckland

A little plane spotting on departure, Air New Zealand's Boeing 787-9 ZK-NZM

Full zoom and cropped so a bit blurred, three versions of Barrier Air's colour scheme... from left, ZK-SDB, ZK-SDG and ZK-SDE

Airwork's bland Boeing 737-300 freighter ZK-TLE

Tasman Cargo Airlines' second Boeing 767-300 freighter, VH-XQU

A feature of Auckland I hadn't discovered before... this from Wikipedia... Pukaki Lagoon, is one of the volcanoes in the Auckland volcanic field. It has a 600 m wide explosion crater, with a surrounding tuff ring. After an eruption about 65,000 yrs ago the crater filled with freshwater and became a lake. It was breached by the sea as sea-levels rose after the end of the last ice age about 8,000 yrs ago and became a tidal lagoon. This was dammed and drained and used as a speedway from 1929 into the 1930s (Henning's Speedway). It is now farmland.

Auckland's most impressive volcano... Rangitoto overlooking its urban charge

Panmure basin to the left of the bridges between Mount Wellington and Pakuranga

The Auckland CBD, harbour bridge and upper reaches of the Upper Waitemata Harbour

The Auckland CBD and harbour bridge

The Tamaki River flowing into Motukorea channel - Motukorea/Brown's Island off Musick Point and Rangitoto beyond with a skiff of cloud covering the crater