Wine flight charters

While its Sounds Air who have the scheduled wine flights (BHE-NPE) it has been Air New Zealand who has been making all the noise with two BHE-GIS charter flights for delegates at recent wine conferences.

Following the International Sauvignon Blanc Celebration in Marlborough, more than 60 top international wine writers, sommeliers and buyers were flown to Gisborne to attend the inaugural Chardonnay and Sparkling Symposium.

Air New Zealand operated two Air Nelson Q300 aircraft on these flights which operated on Thursday 04-February-2016;

ZK-NEQ operated NZ8902 which departed BHE at 13:59 and after its leisurely flight across New Zealand's wine growing regions landed in GIS at 15:43

ZK-NFA operated NZ8904 which departed BHE at 14:16 and followed the same path landing in GIS at 16:14

Radar track of the leisurely flight path of NZ8902 ZK-NEQ BHE-GIS

Read the story and see video from the flight via the Marlborough Express HERE

OOL & CNS take a win

Gold Coast (OOL) & Cairns (CNS) airports have had a win with Hong Kong Airlines announcing that they will continue their service to the Queensland airports year round.

The news comes just one month into the three month temporary Chinese New Year charter flights HX are operating from January to March.

Hong Kong Airways a subsidiary of Hainan Airlines currently operates these services 3x weekly from Hong Kong to the glitter strip, then back to HKG via CNS, using an Airbus A330. 

The new permanent service will operate twice weekly on the circular HKG-OOL-CNS-HKG route, and will now be open to local travellers.  Honk Kong Airlines is limited to secondary ports like OOL & CNS, due to the bilateral between Australia and Hong Kong, which restricts the number of flights into major airports, that each country is allowed and national carrier Cathay Pacific utilises all the HK rights.

Read the Gold Coast Airport media release HERE or the story via the Gold Coast Bulletin HERE or Australian Aviation HERE

Jetstar's 'propstar' service up to full strength

Today saw Jetstar start its full compliment of regional New Zealand routes, with the launch the three remaining services.

Jetstar now has 6 regional ports on its services, Auckland through which all but one of the services fly, Napier, Nelson, New Plymouth, Palmerston North and Wellington.

AKL-NSN services debuted on 01-December-2016 as did AKL-NPE while today 01-February-2016 saw the launch of the remaining services AKL-NPL*, AKL-PMR* & WLG-NSN.
* Full AKL-NPE & AKL-PMR services will start in March, JQ is running reduced services in February

VH-TQD in New Plymouth - photo via stuff.co.nz (Charlotte Curd/Fairfax Media)

The regional JQ fleet in NZ sits at 5 with QantasLink subsidiary Eastern Australia Airlines operating the following Q300s VH-TQD, VH-TQK, VH-TQL, VH-TQM & VH-SBI on behalf of JQ.

Here is a run down of the fleet arrivals into NZ and their first flights

VH-TQD positioned BNE-NLK-AKL 15-January-2016 and entered service as JQ355 AKL-NPE on 19-January-2016

VH-TQK positioned BNE-NLK-AKL 25-January-2016 and entered service as JQ375 AKL-NSN on 26-January -2016 and flew the inaugural JQ365 AKL-PMR today 01-February-2016

VH-TQL positioned BNE-NLK-AKL 23-November-2015 and entered service as JQ355 AKL-NPE on 01-December-2015

VH-TQM positioned BNE-NLK-AKL 06-November-2015 and entered service as JQ371 on 02-December-2015 and flew the inaugural JQ391 NSN-WLG today 01-February-2016 

VH-SBI positioned BNE-NLK-AKL 21-November-2015 and entered service as JQ350 NPE-AKL on 01-December-2015 and flew the inaugural JQ361 AKL-NPL today 01-February-2016

With the launch of todays services JQ will fly 129 weekly services 27 each on the AKL routes with 21 on NSN-WLG

Read the story from the first New Plymouth arrival via stuff HERE or the Jetstar press release HERE

DPS looms large in Tigers eyes

As mentioned last year Tigerair will take over the MEL/ADL/PER - DPS services currently operated by parent Virgin Australia from next month.

Tiger recently held a media event to discuss the flights and show off the first of their Boeing 737-8FE's which they will borrow from VA for use on the route.

Boeing 737-8FE VH-VUB in Tigerair livery at YMML - photo via australianaviation.com.au ©

The first Boeing 737-8FE in service will be VH-VUB ex ZK-PBJ which was painted into Tigerair livery last year and has sat in MEL since awaiting Tigerair service.

The second Boeing in Tigerair livery will be VH-VOR ex ZK-PBF which completed its last VA revenue service yesterday Sunday 31-January-2016 when it arrived into Brisbane as VA1496 from Hamilton Island, it then positioned to Townsville as VA9901 where it entered the Flying Colours hangar for the repaint.

The third and final Boeing to enter Tigerair service is expected to be VH-VOO ex ZK-PBA (an aircraft I experienced twice in the last week)

For more details on the new service and to see photos of the new Tigerair can refit read the Australian Aviation article HERE

Trouble in Paradise

There is serious trouble for Vanuatu and Bauerfield International Airport Port Vila.

Yesterday Air New Zealand announced it was suspending its once weekly AKL-VLI service and cancelling its codeshare on Air Vanuatu flights due to the deteriorating condition of the airport runway. Further video from 3news.co.nz HERE

Today Qantas have announced they too are cancelling their codeshares on Air Vanuatu flights from VLI to BNE & SYD.

Virgin Australia have announced they are sending safety experts to Vanuatu this weekend to assess the situation and it is expected they too will suspend their BNE-VLI flights.

This leaves Fiji Airways and Aircalin & Flysolomons (Solomon Airlines) as the remaining international operators as well as local airline Air Vanuatu, but for how long?.

Air Vanuatu itself is experiencing issues, in November they farewelled their B738 YJ-AV1 after its lease ended, its replacement is due at the end of January with uplift in the interim covered by the dry lease of Transavia Airways B738 PH-HSA. However PH-HSA hasn't flown since 21 January 2016 with B738 services having been cancelled and B733s VH-YNU & VH-PNI of Nauru Airlines covering some services.

Asian carriers enter the Tasman battle

Singapore Airlines and Air Asia X set to join the locals, the LCC's, Emirates and some Chinese carriers in trans-taxman services.

For Malaysian LCC Air Asia X the announcement of the addition of an OOL-AKL-OOL tag to their existing KUL-OOL service, is a re-entry to the Tasman.  Previously they operated an OOL-CHC-OOL tag, however like many flights, this suffered and was ended as a result of low passenger numbers after the Christchurch earthquakes.

The new tag flight will operate daily with D70206 departing OOL at 08:40AEST (09:05) arriving in AKL at 16:00 NZDT (15:30NZST) and returning at 17:00 NZDT (17:30 NZST) arriving back into OOL at 17:25AEST (18:00) --> bracketed times are from the end of Daylight Saving in New Zealand OOL is in QLD which doesn't observe daylight savings.

Check out the announcement via Australian Aviation HERE

Singapore Airlines is set to launch a brand new service from SIN to WLG via CBR.  The new service will operate with the airlines A330 aircraft and will be their first service into the two capital cities. 

The new service will be 4x weekly with an announcement expected this week.

Check out the details (to date) on this service via the AFR HERE


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