ZK-NZV arrives at Auckland International Airport under the command of Captain Barney Wyatt.
On April 21, 1980 the announcement was made of the intent to purchase five Boeing 747-200B series aircraft. On 12 June 1980 Air New Zealand placed an order for five Rolls Royce powered Boeing 747-200s. The first of these, ZK-NZV was accepted on May 27 1981 and arrived at Auckland on May 29 1981.
On 12 June 1980 Air New Zealand placed an order for five Rolls Royce powered Boeing 747-200s. The first of these, ZK-NZV was accepted on May 27 1981 and arrived at Auckland on May 29 1981.
ZK-NZW followed on June 10 with ZK-NZV entering service on the Auckland - Sydney route on June 11.
On August 25 1982 Air New Zealand commenced service to London in its own right with a twice weekly 747-200 service routing Auckland - Papeete -Los Angeles - London Gatwick.
On April 1 1984 the London service started flying direct between Auckland and Los Angeles.
From a personal perspective the 747-200 was one of the best airliners I have had the good fortune to operate. I was a little apprehensive moving back to analogue instrumentation from the wonders of the "glass cockpit" of the 767 but it proved to be a non-event. Being able to fly with Flight engineers was a great experience. The operation was very much "fly by committee". In the event of an emergency the F/O would fly the aircraft and man the radios. The Captain and flight engineer would work through the checklists and procedures. It was done this way as the Captain had a good view of the engineers panel and could very selections and actions made. A very stable aircraft and as it had no RNAV capability (other than INS) terminal procedures usually consisted of radar vectors.
From an engineering point of view the 747 was a step backwards to the DC10. The DC10 had restrictors in the hydraulics that limited gear door operating speeds so that it would give an engineer time to get out of the way. The 747 was instant 3000psi as soon as the hydraulics were fired up. Gear doors move exceptionally fast and there were many grissly deaths attributed to this. The common one was lowering the doors to work on the wheel bays etc. In order to save going up the stairs twice engineers would take a short cut and put the remote gear door handles in the up position and then go upstairs and turn on the hydraulics. The doors would then close and the hydraulics would then be selected off. off course some poor unsuspecting soul would go to either insert or take out the gear pins when all of a sudden the doors would slam shut with deadly consequences. The body gear doors were a classic too as when closed on the ground they made an excellent flat work platform to stand on. However if opened the doors are hinged along the middle. The hinge point drops down and the doors form a vee that rapidly closes up to near nothing. The safety tool of choice for some time was a piece of 4x2 that could be wedged to slow things down. Not sure it would ever have worked. Special procedures were adopted when operating the hydraulics during maintenance including the use of a ground hydraulic pump with variable pressure that would be used to slow the movements down (especially during gear retraction testing etc).
they were lethal .. its a all stand clear evening with the Boeing ground operation .. many a limb also was lost due to incompetence's tho not in the NZ or to my known, 747s 
