Air New Zealand Air Points - Book on 'Air New Zealand"'

MrSydney is currently in Masterton staying with his Mum.

Jus been into Masterton's one and only quality bookshop and discovered a book called
'The Aircraft of Air New Zealand and affiliates since 1940'by Paul Sheehan. Since there was only one copy i grabbed, though at $70 it was not cheap. It has some some great photos.

Can't wait to get home this afternoon and read it,

The choice of an Air NZ DC-10 for the cover photo is somewhat unfortunate, if you think about it ...

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by MrSydney:
MrSydney is currently in Masterton staying with his Mum.

Jus been into Masterton's one and only quality bookshop and discovered a book called
'The Aircraft of Air New Zealand and affiliates since 1940'by Paul Sheehan. Since there was only one copy i grabbed, though at $70 it was not cheap. It has some some great photos.

Can't wait to get home this afternoon and read it,

</font>

Would that be Wright's Bookshop?

What's wrong with the DC10 on the front cover...it wasn't the only NZ crash. There was the F27 crash in 1979 and the DC3 crash in the 60s!

No, not Wrights...Hamleys. Great bookshop.

I'm curious about the F-27 crash in 1979 - do you have any more details?

I can find a reference to the DC-3 crash
here (http://www.airdisaster.com/cgi_bin/view_details.cgi?date=07031963®=YK-AYZ&airline=New+Zealand+International+Airways) but the airline is listed as "New Zealand International Airways" - I didn't think that was a forerunner of AirNZ (wasn't it previously called Tasman Empire Airways Limited?)... anyone have any more info?

[edited to fix URL]

[This message has been edited by mad_atta (edited Jan 28, 2004).]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by MrSydney:
What's wrong with the DC10 on the front cover...it wasn't the only NZ crash. There was the F27 crash in 1979 and the DC3 crash in the 60s!</font>True, the DC-10 wasn't the only crash, however it was the worst crash in terms of loss of life with 257 killed.


As for the F-27:


17.02.79 (14.35) Fokker F-27 Friendship 500

ZK-NFC (10456) Air New Zealand [year built: 1971]
occupants: 2 crew + 2 passengers = 4.
fatalities: 1 crew + 1 passengers = 2.
Non Scheduled Passenger, Final Approach
location: Manakau Harbour (New Zealand)

flight Gisborne - Auckland IAP

total airframe flying hours: 18719; 25704 cycles

The Fokker descended into the sea while on a visual Runway 05 approach at Auckland. The aircraft was descending toward a band of heavy rain and crashed into Manakau Harbour.

PROBABLE CAUSE: " The accident was probably caused by the crew being misled, by a visual illusion in conditions of reduced visibility, into believing they were at a safe height and consequently failing to monitor the flight instruments sufficiently to confirm their aircraft maintained a safe approach height."

Source: FI 10.03.1979 (717); Willem Wendt




[This message has been edited by Quokka (edited Jan 28, 2004).]

Interesting stuff - thanks Quokka. Is this not included in the usual safety records because it was not a scheduled / passenger flight?

Incidentally, while looking for something else I found this article which may be of interest, speculating that "air tides" controlled by the phase of the moon may be a contributing cause in propeller aircraft accidents:

http://www.predictweather.com/articles.asp?ID=9

It speculates that this may have been a factor in the DC-3 crash as well as the Ansett New Zealand crash near Palmerston North.

The DC3 craah operator was NAC for sure.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by mad_atta:
Incidentally, while looking for something else I found this article which may be of interest, speculating that "air tides" controlled by the phase of the moon may be a contributing cause in propeller aircraft accidents:

http://www.predictweather.com/articles.asp?ID=9

It speculates that this may have been a factor in the DC-3 crash as well as the Ansett New Zealand crash near Palmerston North.</font>

Be aware the author of this has some fairly "unusual" theories on weather with spotty record for accuracy at best, and extremely limited scientific support. OTOH weather and climate for places like NZ especially are terribly hard to predict, so who knows?

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by mad_atta:

I can find a reference to the DC-3 crash
here (http://www.airdisaster.com/cgi_bin/view_details.cgi?date=07031963®=YK-AYZ&airline=New+Zealand+International+Airways) but the airline is listed as "New Zealand International Airways" - I didn't think that was a forerunner of AirNZ (wasn't it previously called Tasman Empire Airways Limited?)... anyone have any more info?
</font>

The page at the link above has the name of the airline wrong as well as the rego. The rego of the DC-3 was ZK-AYZ (not YK-AYZ) and the airline was "New Zealand National Airways Corporation" not "International". NZ NAC and Air NZ merged in 1978.