A New Zealand Blog

Fly Air New Zealand. Unless you’re scared of a little smoke.

Posted by in Travel, Videos | 3 comments

In my last post I talked about my relaxing wine tour around Gisborne during my visit to the in-law’s.

Gisborne is a nice place but it’s downside (and probably it’s upside too) is that it’s pretty secluded. My uncle once joked that if you fell off the world you would land in Gisborne.

You can’t fly to Gisborne from Christchurch without going via Auckland or Wellington first. And because Gisborne airport is so small, you end up flying in a plane that wouldn’t surprise you if they strapped the luggage to the roof-rack. Take a look at the video below to see my own experience.

Air New Zealand’s Beech 1900D passenger plane features about 12 seats on each side, a co-pilot that takes the job of the air-steward/stewardess and our own plane also featured a not-very-relaxing smoke effect (which was really steam of course, not real smoke).

The pilot said it was just something to do with the air-con but I’m pretty sure the kid sitting right next to it thought we were on our way down to crash on some island with polar bears and button’s that you have to press every 108 minutes or so (the buttons, not the polar bears).

All in all, I’m not quite sure that we got our money’s worth on this flight. Just shy of $1,200 for two people return from Christchurch to Gisborne. No kidding. I did start to explain to my in-laws that we could have flown to Australia’s Gold Coast for less but my wife kicked me in the shins.

  • Dave

    I can’t believe the cost of that flight, unreal and I would be a bit put out with the smoke thing as well, maybe next time it might be easier (and cheaper) to find the end of the world and jump off – potentially safer too!!!

  • http://www.nzraw.co.nz Mark

    Insane isn’t it? Just to get two thirds of the way up the country. They treat it as 4 individual flights. I think if Air New Zealand can’t fly direct to Gisborne from Christchurch, they should at least do some kind of package deal.

  • http://www.blakjak.net BlakJak

    I’ve had that before on the 1900D’s as well, thats definately condensation/steam, not smoke; smoke has quite a different pattern once it starts wafting about. Check out Youtube for clips of working fires as comparison ;-)