Air NZ Open Day for the new 773

I received an email yesterday inviting me to tour the new 777-300 that Air NZ have recently started flying on the AKL-LAX route (plus a TT skip, currently AKL-MEL-AKL).
There was debate on whether it would visit WLG, but it was confirmed that on 9th February it will be in WLG.
I have booked the first slot to have a 30min visit onboard and hopefully if we get there early enough, perhaps see the beast landing (and making full use of the brakes on the short runway!).
A friend of mine is trying to find out what time it will be arriving through a contact he has....

Masterton (MRO) take II

I t was the end of the month and as is traditional at my office, this meant office drinks and a bite to eat. I had about an hour before I left for Wellington train station to catch the 6.18pm to Masterton.  The fare is $17 which for some reason I swear has gone up since my last attempt at this airport.  The train was on time and whilst there were three noisy children in the seats opposite me, it was a good journey.  I got to see a great deal of the countryside whizz by.  Last time I made the trip it was dark for the whole journey and so was a nice surprise to see the greenery.  I had decided that the 40minutes I had between arriving at the station (this time opting for Solway Station which is the one prior to masterton and closer to the airport) I booked a taxi in advance to cut out any potential for delays to the train making me run and possibly miss the flight and yet again get marooned in MRO!

I subsequently arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare and the service down from AKL arriving about ten minutes later.  The turnaround of the aircraft was quick and unlike last visit the skies were clear, although there some dark formations over the Rimutaka range looming toward us.

The take off down the runway to the north seated in my favourite B1900D position, 3A, was fast and it felt faster than normal.  Perhaps because I hadn’t been in a beechcraft for a while....

Ascending we had a great view of Masterton town and the outlying fields.  The trip – as I write this- was quite bumpy with us flying into high level cloud up on our way to AKL.  I have reserved a room at the BK’s Pioneer Lodge for the night.  Only “3 minutes from the terminal”, relatively cheap and new.  I will work out how to get there upon arrival in AKL....

Footnote - Yep, pretty basic accomodation, but all that was needed.  The landing was a little hairy with the Cyclone Wilma still battering the north of the north island.  Seems to have calmed a little for my trip back to WLG via NPL

Moving goalposts...

So, today the Dominion Post (and earlier on the internet) I see that Air NZ have worked out an agreement with PPQ (Paraparaumu Airport) to start a Q300 operated service between Auckland and PPQ (which will be renamed Kapiti coast airport – presumably to make everyone familiar with where the airport is...?).  Darn! Just as I was nearing on completing my goal, Air NZ goes and moves the goalposts!  Oh well, I will have to add that one to the list.  Ticketing for the route has not yet commenced and the first flights are due in October.  Perhaps I could sort out the inaugural as way of ticking this one off.  The schedule looks to be very generous with plenty of flights on weekdays and about 3 return services on the weekend also.  I guess that they can see this route as viable – I am presuming that the main movement of traffic will be from Kapiti up to AKL and back, hence an early morning flight to AKL (0650?).

They are a few other frequent flyers looking at securing the inaugurals for this route, so perhaps we will have a mini-do....Watch this space.

Old Air NZ Airports - A Quick visit

Since starting out to visit every Air NZ operated airport in the country, I have as you know, made it to 24 / 26.

Whilst taking a fantastic Christmas holiday with the family in the south island, I also took in another three airports that Air New Zealand used to serve.  These were, Mount Cook (hence subsidiary Mount Cook Airlines), Oamaru and a little airport that Air NZ used to used just outside of Twizel (Pukaki Airport, TWZ)  when the weather for a mount cook airport landing was too bad – which presumably, was quite often!

Mount Cook is an awesome sight and we took a trip up there on Christmas Eve to have a look around the Sir Edmund Hillary centre, which is tacked onto the side of the historic Hermitage hotel up in Mount Cook village.  Unfortunately, despite beautiful weather in Twizel (where we were staying for a few days) we were unable to see the summit of Mount Cook as low cloud was blocking our view.

The airport is a little way down the down but equally several degrees cooler than the base of the mountain.

So I felt that despite not leaving nor arriving by plane from any of these three airports, I had made the effort to visit them.

Have I started something?!

It seems that someone has caught on to my idea of reaching all 26 airports that Air New Zealand operate to and from in NZ.....

Air NZ Tiki Tour

Although, the travel is inteded for within 6 days - not bad for a mileage run, without the mileage though!
It is for a good cause....I wonder what it will go for? Currently at $788 (6/12/2010)
.

Slow on the Updates....

Apologies for not updating, I have a couple of things to add and hoping to get WAG and MRO ticked off soon...I have also a comment on the WLG-DUD-WLG run I did a while back....
Also trying to work out how to hold onto my BA silver AND NZ gold.  I have since fallen from the heady heights of Gold Elite, so no Christmas pressie for me this year!
Obtaining NZ gold is pretty easy and relatively cheap to do on *A airlines other than NZ.  The challenge for me is the NZ metal 900 points you need to attain for NZ GE.  This basically means J class flights to really get amongst the AP's - these as a one off affair do not come cheap and I can't justify them at this moment in time - despite the government adding a few more shillings i my pocket courtesy of some tax cuts....

End of a long day...

I will post my travels of today (ahead of a couple of airports that I have ticked off previously) as it is fresh in my head.
It was an early start as i had been booked for a very full day today by those great people at Eagle Air.  The aim was to clear the last three airports I have on my list, W(h)anganui, Gisborne and Kaitaia.
The itinery I had was pretty full on, WLG-AKL-WAG-AKL-GIS-AKL-KAT-AKL-WLG, a total of 8 sectors in 11hours!
The most challenging thing was the connection onto WAG.  Only 5minutes according to my e-ticket!
I waited outside for my taxi at 6am and got a phone call which promptly made my phone go dead with no battery power left -damn.  I think it was the taxi company phoning.....
Well 10minutes later still no taxi.  So i had to go back to the house and phone to chase them up.  turns out the guy left without me, despite me being on time?!  A new taxi arrived just as I was about to give up and take the car or get another taxi...
The guy floored it and we made it to the airport as boarding had commenced - no time for the lounge and breakfast then!  Also no time to talk with the ground staff to discuss my tight connection time.
We departed on time thankfully, and were off to the south with a turn over the cook strait and AKL bound.
We arrived on the stand just before 8am and I had mentioned to the aircrew on our decent about my tight connection.  They couldn't get through to the ground crew as descent had commenced and didn't want to disturb the pilots.  They radioed through on landing and I heard the radio when I reached the regional gates that are a fair run away from the jet gates....
I had missed it.  Not sure by how many minutes, but i couldn't have been more than a couple or five....

I guess it was a long shot and a big ask to make a 5minute connection at AKL dom!  so it was off to the Koru club for a breakfast and coffee.  I still had the GIS flight at 10.45am so it gave me a couple of hours to write up a blog or two (see previous) and check emails etc.
Half an hour before the departure time, I was paged to the desk and asked if I wanted to voluntarily be bumped and take the next GIS flight....I explained my flight schedule and that as the KAT flight was the only one of the day, it was difficult to re-route around that and get home to WLG today.  She told me that as I was on a staff travel booking, if they couldn't find anyone else, I would be moved.
Luckily no more pages and I left for the regional gates again and my boarding pass went through ok.  Off to GIsborne ontime too.
Flight was under an hour and we had a 25min turnaround in GIS before heading back.

The terminal is pretty small, although has by the looks of it a pretty good cafe.  More info here
and here.
GIS's claim to fame is that it is the only runway in the world that has a railway line running through it!  I didn't actually notice during my visit, although I do remember hearing that there is an airport with a railway line running across the air strip...


Back to AKL and another visit to the Koru lounge for some lunch.  Not much in the way of hot food, a curried soup I think.  I ended up running for the Kaitaia flight due to a lack of lounge announcements until the final one calling me by name.  I legged it to the other end of the terminal and got there just in time....(lucky this time!).  I had mistakenly been looking at the boarding time of my return portion instead of the outbound and got it into my head that it was boarding at 10 past the hour and not the correct 5 to the hour...

Kaitaia was a very small airport as you would expect for the far north.  It is the northern most airport on the AirNZ network, so today I have completed the furthest north and the furthest east...
25minutes and we were off again back to the city of sails.
Another stop at the Koru club and this time a beer and snack.  The jet back to Welly was at 5pm so I had about 30mins to relax and reflect on if I could have feasibly caught that first flight.  the only way would have been if they had held it for me.  Oh well, I guess I will add WAG to MRO to complete another day....