NZFF

Hey guys

Some pictures from Rotorua today.For those who haven't heard, Air New Zealand is starting services between Rotorua and Sydney in December. Today they did a "validation" flight to check all the systems and stuff are in place in preparation for the scheduled flights. It was the first A320 to visit Rotorua.

So I went out to the airport this morning and met up with Daniel (who has more pics).

We got visited by ZK-OJC.



OJC landed this morning and they did some training stuff on the ground with baggage and ground equipment. Then they were going to do some testing of the approaches and go arounds. Daniel and me stood by the fence and got blasted by a few thousand pounds of jet thrust: AWESOME!



Then it was off down the runway before a screamer of a take off (compared to the turboprops - faster and louder)



He went out round Totara (point a bit outside of ROT) and then came back for a go around. The go around was pretty low and close. Would have been cooler even lower, but that's not the way go arounds work.



He then went out to Okareka



And came back again for a full stop landing





And here's OJC sitting around as I was leaving (I had a physics exam to go to and they weren't leaving until a bit later)


The Daily Post (our local rag/newspaper) wrote an article about the A320 coming in today, so half of Rotorua was out there clinging to the fence . Most of them left after the first take off though.

Very cool, thanks for posting up these pics

Thanks Alister

I thought I most post up a couple of others from the day.







The A320 really dominates the tarmac at Rotorua. I'd quite like to a BBJ (like N164RJ, a somewhat frequent visitor) or similar come in at the same time as the Bus and a couple of the turboprops.

Thanks for sharing guys....great photos! I really hope the ROT flights do well, it'll be great for the region.

Looks like a beaut of a day- hopefully the weather holds out untill I do my cross country there on Wednesday!

Cheers for posting, always interesting to see pictorial evidence of aviation happenings around the country