Fiji Airways, formerly Air Pacific, have announced the routes and destinations its new Airbus A330 aircraft will serve.

The aircraft feature the new livery of the airline and look pretty nice!

From 21 April 2013, the Fiji Airways A330s will fly from Nadi to:

Auckland
Brisbane
Los Angeles (from 1 July)
Melbourne (from 2-27 August)
Sydney (from 8 June)

The airline’s Boeing 747-400 will continue to operate routes alongside the A330, with a retirement set for January 2014.

The first aircraft is Airbus A330-243 DQ-FJT, msn 1394

In the first of a new series of posts, I’m starting to look at the aviation attractions to see around the various airports around the world that spotters visit.

Quite often, a city will have a second airport with some unique aircraft to see, or an aviation museum telling the region’s aviation history and displaying preserved aircraft.

In this post we’ll look at Auckland. The city’s airport is the main gateway to New Zealand, and is quite busy with large airliners arriving from around the Far East, Asia, Middle East and the Americas. It’s also a busy hub for Air New Zealand and its feeder airlines, and is also busy with cargo carriers.

Nearby Attractions
Ardmore Aerodrome is a former WWII USAF bomber base and is now a general aviation airfield around 15 miles east of Auckland International. It has a single runway and is the busiest airport in New Zealand by number of movements.

Mountain Air have their maintenance base here, and the airfield is home to NZ Warbirds restoration company in residence with a number of historic aircraft that are regularly flown and displayed. They have an immaculate DC-3 which operates scenic and charter flights from the airfield.

North Shore Airfield is situated 16 miles north of Auckland city centre. It is a small general aviation field which is popular for flight training. It also has flights to Great Barrier Island and a few other destinations. Movements can be seen from Postman Road which also runs past the parking aprons.

Auckland and many other airports are covered in my book, Airport Spotting Guides Far East and Australasia. It covers where to spot, what you’ll see, nearby attractions, spotting hotels and detailed maps for each airport.

Buy here

Air New Zealand has announced its new colour scheme and branding.

Whilst its nothing too drastic, it sees the airline stepping away from its green and blue tail colours, and adopting the national colour of black on its tail. It will also adopt revised titling on the airline name.

The traditional Koru symbol will still be retained on the tail, giving it a strong link with the previous scheme.

Air New Zealand began using black as its corporate colour ahead of the All Blacks’ campaign last year.

“Black has resonated well with our customers and staff who identify with it as the colour of New Zealand and a natural choice for our national airline. It inspires pride, is part of our Kiwi identity and a symbol of Kiwi success on the world stage,” Chief Executive Office Rob Fyfe says.

The final leg of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner World Tour has been announced, with airports in Australia, New Zealand, Morocco and Uzbekistan on the list.

The third prototype, N787BX, has been visiting countries, airlines and press around the world over the past couple of months, promoting the new type and demonstrating its abilities.

This leg sees it visit:

• May 24 – Sydney, Australia
• May 29 – Auckland, New Zealand
• May 31 – Darwin, Australia
• June 1 – Tashkent, Uzbekistan
• June 3 – Casablanca, Morocco

I was lucky enough to get invited on board the aircraft when it visited British Airways at London Heathrow in April. You can read about that here.

To follow the Dream Tour, visit the website http://www.newairplane.com/787/dreamtour

I came across this video today showing baggage handlers at Christchurch International Airport openly crushing baggage in a garbage truck in front of hundreds of horrified passengers waiting on an Air Asia X aircraft alongside.

Whether this is simply old ‘test’ luggage as the official line says, or lost luggage with peoples’ personal items in, we don’t know. It certainly spurs you on to claim anything you’ve lost!

Baggage being destroyed

Christchurch Airport in New Zealand has had an excellent outdoor viewing deck for many years. This is now under threat, however, according to a report by Geoff Pierce.

Improvements to the terminal are likely to close the viewing area, with much more limited views only available from inside.

Geoff states: “I have been in touch with the Airport authorities on an irregular basis, since my last visit in 2006 and subscribe to the CHC redevelopment newsletter. The latest news received today, is that the
viewing deck will `probably` not be finally closing until around November 2009. (usual caveats apply)”