OK, I’m a bit of a plane nerd. So instead of catching the highway bus from Auckland to Taupo, I had a bit of fun and caught a flight instead. The fare was quite reasonable, so I had a 40 minute ride on an Air New Zealand Link Beech 1900 – a 19 seat commuter plane.
Here it is at Taupo after landing in Taupo.
I was a little surprised that there was no security for commuter flights at Auckland airport. Just show your boarding pass, and head straight out onto the tarmac and up the stairs onto the plane. This perhaps shows how the hijacking incident on the Air New Zealand flight between Blenheim and Christchurch happened last week.
Unexpectedly to me, the kick in the back of the seat as sped down the runway was quite strong, and it climbed like a rocket. I was enjoying myself fairly quickly! It was all fairly smooth, but as we descended below the cloud layer, there were a few bumps going through the thermals rising up from the ground.
There was no cockpit door, so I could see the pilots doing their thing – and when landing, could see through the cockpit windscreen to see the runway being lined up. This was also quite fun for a plane nerd like me.
This is a photo taken a minute or so before we landed. Coming into Taupo, I got to see jet boats operating on a river and some hot springs steaming away below.
Here’s a short video when we were descending into Taupo. I stopped when a few bumps meant that I was having troubles holding the camera steady.
I flew again from Taupo to Wellington after my Tongariro hiking trip, and hoped to get some views over Mt Ngauruhoe and Mt Ruapehu on the way. Unfortunately, they were clouded in, but there are some great winter photos at the website of Eagle Airways, the company that operates the flights on behalf of Air New Zealand. Click here for the Eagle Airways gallery.
