When you board the plane, a man stands by the tree on the right to direct you to the correct gate. This was taken a week after the scare in London in August.New Zealand love small airlines. Nelson-based Air Nelson was bought up by Air New Zealand a while back, so we had Origin Pacific, which operated for around eight years before it went bust a couple of months ago. Now we're going to have Kiwi Pacific starting, again in Nelson.
Don't get me wrong, we are all for the small operators. You get to fly over Cook Straight to Wellington on a 7-seater Cessna during rain, (read: bad). What I don't understand is, Kiwis are, besides New Zealanders, New Zealand dollar, and Chinese gooseberry, the tiny nocturnal flightless bird. So, Kiwis on planes? Kiwis are the mascot of New Zealand Air Force, and there was another Hamilton-based airline called Kiwi International (I think) which lived for around six years. It's got to be the rich Kiwis' sense of humor I'm not getting, right?
Well, I must admit I'm still getting used to Kiwi sense of humor, but flying to Nelson on a small airplane with no fuss airport security I loved it! And the views on landing and take off are spectacular!
ReplyDeleteOn take off and landing, I try to see if our house is on fire/has burned down. I don't know why, but seriously, I worry about that only when I'm taking off/landing. After that, I forget about it. I'll also post Nelson Airport's old carpet some time. I'm sure it was way after your time, but it's still ... hilarious.
ReplyDeleteI love tiny airports although the only time I've used one was Lands End to St Marys on the Scilly Isles.
ReplyDeleteIn NZ we flew into Christchurch where the customs washed our shoes before allowing us in. We flew out of Auckland.
We did visit the small airport at Hokitika which is probably a similar size to Nelson.
Hello, just looked over your blog and will be back with more comments, nice pics. Nice to see summer in your pics just as we are going into winter here in the north.
ReplyDeleteThere is a town , Nelson, here in British Columbia, and a nice place to visit, and aslo the original Nelson In Lancashire, England
Hi, everyone. Thanks for visiting.
ReplyDeletePiika, one time when we flew to Christchurch (just after 9/11 in fact) we hit a turbulance on a ... maybe a 21-30 seater???, and the steward and the captain took turns explaining things, but we couldn't hear anything because what can only be described as the emergency beep-beep was overpowering the intercom. The only thing we caught was the boys ordering us to "sit back and enjoy the flight"!!!, and the 10 or so passengers yelped in unison. But we landed ok.
Gerald, methinks you had English sheep poo on your footwear. And as a proud, cosmopolitan Nelsonian, I daresay we're much bigger than Hokitika, but I can't guarantee. We have two terminal buildings (one used to be for the defunct Origin Pacific - not sure what it's used for now,) and on the main one, we have 10 or so "gates"... though they are mostly white lines painted on the tarmac, and we still go out this one exit.
Outhouse Capital of Canada, around the time of Nelson's 100th (2oo??) last October, we heard the number and location of other places on the earth called Nelson, but I didn't pay much attention, to be honest. War is war.
Our footwear was clean but obviously customs were taking no chances at that time.
ReplyDeleteApologies -- 2 termini 10 gates -- that rates large airport -- I see now you were refering to small operators.
Nelson, Lancs has a pub in the middle of a roundabout but no airport!
Kiwi pacific, sounds grand! And Kiwi is definitely associated with everything NZ isn't it? Love the @ terminals and 10 gates: makes Nelson sound so big!
ReplyDeleteHola¡ tienas unas bellas fotografías, te visitaré a menudo.
ReplyDeleteSaludos desde España
OK, folks, now I feel like I have to go shoot the airport and show how big/small it is! Se do have a few nice public art work there, too. I wonder what the airport staff would think, both of us photographing areas of the airport and then not boarding on any flight!
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