nzom_pilot

quote from an industry insider on another website re SJE being hit at WLG looks like 9V-SVA got off lightly compared to SJE!

both 01-0029 an 01-0065 are at CHC today, parked on the operation deep freeze ramp.

Interesting - sister Gulf V 01-0065 has been in NZ for the past few days.

Believe its the Singapore Flying College in Maroochydoore with their Lear Jets - the future Singapore Airlines pilots

Definately not the best airport for SVA, 1st the engine incident then the ramp rash! Oh well, she departed 22/01 as SIA282F, in convoy with SVF operating the scheduled SIA282. Not sure if she had passengers or was just an empty repositioning flight. SJE is still parked up at Wellington - appears her damage was caused by a baggage trolley!!

Source: http://www.stuff.co.nz/4824885a11.html

You are correct - it has been ZK-PBM since 24-October-2008

2 "ramp rash" incidents have hit NZ in recent days. On Friday 16-Jan ZK-SJE a NZ733 was hit on the ground in Wellington causing a gash rumored to be 4ft x 2ft. It is still on ground in Wellington while repairs are undertaken. Not sure what type of ground vehicle hit it or where the gash is. In the early hours of Monday 19-Jan Singapore Airlines B777-200ER 9V-SVA operating SQ281/282 sitting at the gate, was hit by a catering truck which ripped a door off, believed to be Door R1. This is now sitting in the NZ MX hanger awaiting repair.

Its showing on the Sydney airport website arrivals as UA839D which makes a little more sense to me than A, but Im sure both are acceptable, to the airline. What this usually means is one is a delayed flight so gets the D or A added so as not to confuse, it with the one scheduled for that day. So I'd say 839A is yesterdays flight delayed and 839 is todays flight. Does this help?

Not wanting to disapoint anyone, but I was under the impression that 9M-MRD was repainted in standard Malaysian colours late last year. Online photo search engines concur with this, looks like she was repainted in early October 2008 :frown: She certainly did look stunning when she was in the Freedom of Space livery, I used to love seeing her on the Adelaide airport webcam when she visited Adelaide.

FRE is now online http://theaussieaviator.net/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=2248

That was ZK-OJL the original Looney Tunes/Warner Bros livery and when they decided to lease it out to XL they reainted ZK-OJO into the special scheme. OJO reverted to standard Air NZ livery with three weeks of Freedom ceasing services, and had been the only aircraft in Freedom colours for several months prior to the end. ZK-FRE is "lovely", lol, its the aircraft with the largest love/hate relationship in NZ, some love it some hate it, I don't mind it. It is known in most circles over here as FREddy the Frog for obvious reasons. Ive got several pics somewhere I'll dig one up and upload it to the database here so those who don't know what we're on about can see it.

As Chris said they finished flying under the Freedom brand in March 08. Air New Zealand decide to drop the Freedom brand, because with the amount of competition across the Tasman, the difference between the NZ economy fares and the Freedom "LCC" fares was negligible, so they decided it had served its purpose. Interestingly enough they had reformed Freedom as Zeal320 Ltd which held the AOC and operated all the A320s in Freedom and Air New Zealand service, with the lower cost base and lower crew wages. This also resulted in all the A320 services moving to the Zeal range of flight numbers NZ700/800/900. Zeal320 Ltd has now also ceased with the A320 fleet and crews being absorbed back into Air New Zealand. You will notice shortly that the flight numbers will revert back from the NZ700/800/900 range to the NZ100/200/300 range. About the only changes were the loss of the Warner Bros livery and the loss of international service to Palmerston North. Other than that most people didn't notice the loss of the Freedom brand, especially as since they became Zeal320 and operated both brands, you could get an ANZ liveried plane on a Freedom flight and vv.

Nice report Darren Glad to see you got to see Auckland at its best, and also got a small taste when you left of it in the rain - get used to that! I have flown LAN from AKL to Santiago and my best friends have several experinces with Aerolineas, Auckland-Buenos Aries and return. I can say without a doubt that LAN is definately the better of the two. Especially as Aerolineas have a habit of overselling their flights by a large margin, and you aren't guaranteed a seat until you have a boarding pass in your hands. I'm not surprised you has taxiing issues in Auckland. Last time I was in Auckland the Aerolineas flight from Buenos Aries arrived about 9hrs late and took one of the high speed exits from the runway, then stopped dead with its tail still overhanging the runway, causing an Air New Zealand 737 to abort its take off roll and an Air Pacific 73H to do a go around.

Darren - PM sent

A cute little flash holiday animation from Air New Zealand http://www.happyholidaysfromairnz.co.nz/

Absolutely I do like it, just can't stand the thought of it being almost Christmas and 2008 almost being time expired! But that has nothing to do with the Christmas decorations here.

There are some piccies of it in AKL HERE and HERE if anyone is interested. She routed TPE-BNE-AKL on 06/12/08 before the hop AKL-SYD

Two days away from TAA and I come back to this lovely new theme! :icon_eek: Quite scary really, I have managed to avoid the whole Christmas thing so far this year, up until now. Now this has suddenly reminded me there is only 14 days till Christmas ARRRGHH! :eek2: :sos: Although I do like the decorations, especially the skiing penguin! :biggrin:

very interesting, Airport Fire & Resuce trucks in NZ have been yellow for quite sometime. Also interesting to compare the stats of the Mk8 Rosenbauer with the new Rosenbauer CA-5 Panther that Christchurch International has recently bought two of. Rosenbauer CA-5 Panther - Christchurch 705hp Caterpillar C-18 turbo charged diesel engine Water tank capacity of 13,000 litres Carries 250kg of Purple K dry powder A roof monitor discharge of 5,800 litres per minute with a 100 metre throw Mk8 Rosenbauer - Canberra 6 cylinder, water cooled diesel engine (with turbocharger and charge air cooling) 8900 litres of water carried 225kg of 'secondary' agent carried can discharge 8900 litres in less than 2 minutes

I agree blogspot (blogger.com) is great - and when you start the blog it gives you an option to link to their front page which increases traffic numbers on your blog. It also pays to link to freinds blogs and have them put links to your blog. You can also add widgets like feedjit which shows you traffic stats on your blog, i.e. whos visited from where - they also give you an option to link to your local blogosphere which also increases traffic numbers to your site. If you want an example of blogspot and feedjit then have a look at my blog - Marlborough Aviation Scene - I dont úse keywords for any of my pics or posts and I seem to have good readership from all over the world, despite having a really hard web address if your typing it into your broswer manually. Good luck with your blog

this was posted over the weekend on airliners.net - could this be it????

Correct with Christchurch - they are international fishing fleet crew transfer flights. They fly the new crew in from Uzbekistan and then the old crew returns to Uzbekistan. Usually 3 or 4 flights a year from memory. The outbound flight is scheduled to depart Christchurch tomorrow Friday 7th at 1430 local so 1230 Sydney time.

This is my first attempt at a trip report and the format is based on the thousands I have read on various online forums over the last few years, comments welcome. 13 October 2008 NZ135 AKL-BNE Boeing 747-4F6 ZK-SUJ – Auckland Seat: 59K upgraded to 29A STD:0925 ATD: pushback 0935, wheels up 0947 STA:0955 ATD: touchdown 0939, on gate 0947 Departure: Gate 6, Runway 05R Arrival: Runway 19, Gate 80 The day started early at 0500 local, which was made even worse when thought of in Brisbane time (0200!). After getting ready and checking out of the Centra Auckland Airport hotel, I caught their shuttle to the International terminal. After locating and filling out a New Zealand departure card, I joined the queue for check in, which was almost non existent. Checked in by a very pleasant Air New Zealand employee who informed me that my airpoints dollars upgrade from economy to premium economy was most likely to be successful due to light loads in PE, and that she would allocate me my economy window seat 59K, and that the gate agent would confirm my upgrade and give me the new boarding pass. Headed upstairs to the viewing area but there weren’t many aircraft in that I needed to photograph. Then headed to one of the landside café’s, for a spot of breakfast, it was below par to say the least. After passing easily through passport control and security I explored the international terminal. Since I last flew international from Auckland in 2004 there have been significant changes to the international terminal, the most notable being the addition of a “2nd” story to segregate the arriving and departing passengers. Movements of note around the international terminal were Pacific Blue 738s ZK-PBF, PBJ and PBI, Qantas 747-338 VH-EBX, Cargolux 744F LX-GCV, and Air New Zealand Boeing 737 ZK-NGE on the domestic connection NZ303 to Christchurch. My aircraft ZK-SUJ arrived on gate 6 shortly after 0700 from LAX. Next to us on gate 8 was Boeing 772 ZK-OKB which pushed back at the same time as us as NZ99 to NRT. When the gate agent had arrived and settled in behind her computer I went up and asked about my airpoints dollars upgrade. She quickly looked up and confirmed the upgrade was confirmed and printed me a boarding pass for seat 29C. She handed me the boarding pass and stated it was an aisle seat but at least it was in PE. I said that was a pity as I had the window in economy, and then said I supposed all the window seats in PE were taken. She had another look and said quite a few were open, and promptly changed my seat again to 29A. Boarding was quick and easy with the usual advance boarding for passengers with small children, and those needing assistance, followed by Business Premiere and us the Premium Economy passengers. Everyone was on board well before scheduled departure time, unfortunately we had to wait for the remaining luggage to be loaded and paperwork to be completed causing a short delay in departure. 29A is located in a section of only 8 seats, forward of the economy cabin in the space just behind door 2L and boarded by the stairs to the upper deck. Out of the 8 seats in this section there were only 5 filled. This is a nice section of the aircraft and remarkably private in flight, but seemed to be missed a lot by the crew during their service. We got the meal service but I noticed that other sections of the PE cabin had been offered newspapers etc, and we barely saw the crew other than at meal time, or when handing out arrival documentation. Air New Zealand’s premium economy gets business class service on international flights, but is operated like normal economy on the short Trans-Tasman hops, i.e. no pre take of drinks etc. One thing you do get though is an Express Arrival card for fast tracking through the arrivals process. Unfortunately from December Air New Zealand is changing things so that PE is now not bookable on the Tasman legs and will instead be offered to Star Elite, Star Gold and other valued passengers as Space +, inline with the new space + zone’s being installed and offered on the domestic Boeing 737 fleet. Leg room was amazing in PE, and the seat was slightly better than the standard economy seat, with leg rests and side bin storage between the window and seat. We also got the Air New Zealand noise cancelling headphones, instead of the standard ones available in economy. After push back at 0935local and waiting for OKB to be pushed back across our path, we took the short taxi from the International apron via A10 to runway 05R. After holding briefly the throttles were advanced and we thundered off down the runway. The take off roll was rather short as we rotated and were airborne by the Qantas/Pacific Blue wing of the domestic terminal, at 0947local. After climbing out on the 05 heading we took a left turn across the city crossing overhead Middlemore hospital, then heading for the CBD and harbour, before crossing the coast overhead Piha. I settled in to my seat and watched the IFE. I managed to get in two episodes of The Big Bang Theory, two of the Simpson’s and one episode of Bro Town, as well as having time to look at the airshow map. There was a little bit of an issue with the IFE in our section with it going off shortly after we boarded until we were airborne, and the couple in front of me had to have theirs reset twice in flight. The meal service was a breakfast service, consisting of either a continental or cooked breakfast. The smell of the cooked breakfast was too tempting so I settled on that. It consisted of a piece of ham quiche and a sausage, an apple and cinnamon muffin, and a bowl of fresh fruit pieces, mainly orange and pineapple. It was accompanied by orange juice and coffee. There was a full bar service offered but I don’t think wine quite fits with breakfast! The coffee was the best I’d had on any flight I’ve been on, and was a thousand times better than the rubbish I had in the terminal café. The weather in Auckland when we left was an almost cloudless sky, with beautiful sunshine and temps in the mid teens. Across the Tasman, there were large patches of cloud, but it was nice and sunny at our cruising altitude. There was no turbulence until we descended off the Queensland coast, through the cloud. The weather in Brisbane was slightly worse than Auckland with broken cloud, although the humidity and temperature were higher than Auckland. We tracked up the coast probably to SAVER before heading for Moreton Island and down through the area of aptly named points, LEAKY, BOATS, SINNK, etc before landing on runway 19 at 0939local. We then taxied to the International terminal and arrived on Gate 80 at 0947local. While taxiing in I spotted Air Niugini Boeing 767 P2-ANA and Our Airline Boeing 737 VH-INU waiting to take off from Runway 01, with Qantas Boeing 767 VH-OGT next to us on Gate 81 just about to push back as QF69 to CNS and NRT. Overall I have to rate this as an excellent flight. I’ve become a huge fan of the Premium Economy seating on NZ and will have to travel to either HKG or LAX to experience the full features of it. The service when our area was remembered was great, but points were lost as we seemed to be forgotten. The IFE selection was good, the extra legroom, noise cancelling headphones, side bin storage and leg rests were big plusses as was the private cabin feeling. Check In: 8/10 Boarding: 9/10 Seat/comfort/etc: 8/10 IFE: 8/10 Service/crew: 7/10 Meal: 7/10 Overall: 47/60 78%

Nice report Darren. Glad you enjoyed the offferings in the South Island, even if it was in Canterbury.:rolleyes::headshake: Interesting about the aircraft change at the gate. Its the second week in a row that the aircraft that was on the monday CHC-MEL-CHC-SYD-CHC and CHC-BNE-CHC-BNE-CHC routes have swapped for the second flight.