While trying to find photo evidence of BAE146 jets operating to NZMC, I found a super cool and super awesome photo showing very rare Ansett New Zealand livery as seen below:
According to aviation historians, this livery was used for some months by Ansett New Zealand until the airline decided to paint normal livery over it.
Did you know that this particular model is called BAe 146-200QC meaning it can be converted from all passenger to all cargo back to all passenger.
Here is interesting statement
"The airline’s third whisper-jet, British Aerospace BAe 146-200QC ZK-NZC arrived in Christchurch on the 9th of October 1989 after its delivery flight from Britain. The “QC” (quiet convertible) was to fly 77 passengers on daylight flights, then convert in 20 minutes to a cargo-only aircraft for night freight flights. Delivered to New Zealand in British Aerospace livery it entered service in its British registration G-BPBT on the 16th of October 1989. It was placed on the New Zealand register as ZK-NZC on the 25th of January 1990 and later repainted in Ansett New Zealand colours in April 1990 being named City of Manukau.The arrival of the whisper-jet into Queenstown also marked the end of Ansett New Zealand’s De Havilland Canada Dash 8 services to Mount Cook on the 29th of July 1989."
Here is OFFICIAL statement by OFFICIAL ex Ansett NZ Captain years ago:
The BAE 146 jets they flew weren't built to carry pax but were built as Freighters for TNT Europe but order was cancelled. So Ansett NZ got them cheap!
From recall as a result he said they were missing things like fairings on flap tracks on wings - the weird noise when the flaps went down and why flight attendant would make an announcement about the flap noise so it didn't scare the passengers!
The air-con was setup for a freighter and it carried quite a bit less fuel than pax variant.
He said it was a great aircraft to fly, responsive, with pleasantly light progressive controls; a 'pilot's aeroplane'.
But it was quite unreliable. And a fuel hog! It also didn't have auto-throttle, just a throttle trimming system called TMS(?), meaning only one vertical mode could be set in the autopilot.
Gotcha for young gun pilots would be after levelling off at cleared altitude if you were given a speed by ATC you set IAS to hold that speed, which then released the Alt Hold!
Being Cargo versions they had stronger undercarriage than pax version and it was very, very forgiving so most landings were classed as 'excellent' by the passengers, even if it was rather plonked on!
The Yaw Damper didn't work so well and cabin crew, especially at the back complained of a continual yawing / rolling sensation which could make them and pax feel nauseous! It was very under powered - fine on T/O and initial climb, but regularly running out of puff above 15,000ft.Especially on cold days with wing heaters on.
He said the bleed air often used to stink like wet socks. There were issues in those earlier versions of getting toxic gases into the cabin.
With full flaps and the speed brake out for landing, it was very draggy, and could be landed in a very short space. No reverse remember just hugely good brakes.
There wasn't an airfield in NZ it couldn't operate in/out of. I think he flew a charter into NZWO - Wairoa once.
Back then WO was around 915m seal and 350m tarseal and grass.
The joke was, why did Bae-146 have 4 engines? Because there wasn't room to fit 6! The other joke was it didn't have engines but five APUs fitted!
Meanwhile I am still digging for photo evidence of BE146 action in NZMC
Regards,
Aharon
Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2025 6:25 pm
