It has been an interesting two months at Hobart Airport as 2023 gets underway, and my camera has gotten a good workout!
My first spotting trip of 2023 was to finally photograph VH-OFP, one of Jetstar’s new A321neos, as well as a Southern Airlines Beechcraft 1900 and a RFDS Beechcraft King Air, still wearing the old RFDS livery.
Almost exactly a year after the wonderful Par Avion Southwest Wilderness Day Trip, my parents and I decided to take the shorter but equally enjoyable Maria Island Day Trip.
After arriving at Par Avion’s Cambridge Aerodrome terminal, we weighed ourselves and were told that we were the only passengers on the trip. Shortly after, our excellent pilot Jonah introduced himself and after a quick safety briefing we boarded Cessna 206 VH-IDF.
After considering a few ways to recap my first year of aviation blogging/photography I have decided to go with this A-Z list, I hope you enjoy!
Although not the best lighting I was relatively pleased with this photo of Air New Zealand A321neo ZK-NNA bearing the stunning All-Blacks livery.
Seeing this Queen of the Skies at Auckland was too awesome to not include!
Wonderful to see the seasonal freight flights back this Summer!
This awesome looking plane belonging to RedJet aviation was parked up at HBA in early December.
Earlier this week my Dad and I took a short three night trip to Canberra. This gave me the opportunity to try an airline I’d never flown before- Link Airways. Since launching the Hobart-Canberra route in late 2020 I had been keen to try them out, so was very pleased to finally be getting the chance.
After arriving at a fairly busy Hobart Airport on a Monday mid-morning, there was some confusion as to where we would check-in for our flight. I had initially thought that due to their codeshare we could check-in through Virgin, however we eventually established that a Swissport employee would show up on behalf of Link Airways an hour before boarding and check us in at the very end desk on the left side of the departures hall.
It’s been an exceptional two months at YMHB as summer season has begun. I’ve managed to go out plane spotting quite a lot (thanks to Mum and Dad for driving me out so often!) and have been able to snap some very cool aircraft.
I made it out on a sunny afternoon in early November to get my first Qantas 737, Jetstar A320 and Link Airways Saab 340 photos since I got my new lens. I was also able to have the interesting opportunity to capture Qantas 737s in both the old (first picture) and new (second picture) liveries. Which do you prefer?
This is the first of a new series of posts where I cover the history of various Australian Airlines. I wanted to start with a newer airline that had an easier history to cover. That made FlyPelican an obvious choice, so below is a simplified but reasonably in-depth history of this little regional Australian Airline, based in Newcastle with a fleet of BAe Jetstream 32s.
Chapter 1 – Founded from Aeropelican
FlyPelican were founded in 2014, risen from the ashes of Aeropelican. Aeropelican had been a small regional airline serving regional NSW from 1968-2013. After a number of minor safety incidents and a few consistent years of lost revenue, Aeropelican’s operations ended in late 2013. However their legacy still lives on today: FlyPelican operate several routes that Aeropelican operated during their final months and several BAe Jetstream 32s were transferred to FlyPelican. Most importantly though, FlyPelican was actually founded by many members of staff who had been displaced from Aeropelican.
VH-KZO, a DHC-6-300 Twin Otter at Sydney Airport in 1984 operating for Aeropelican. Photo Credit- Peter Lea.
Chapter 2 – The first 5 years- 2014-2018 Continue reading
The last two months at the airport have turned out to be very interesting. There have been a surprising number of unexpected and unusual visitors to Hobart, and I’ve been fortunate to see some of them. I will not post every picture I took, only the best ones. If you want to see more photos they are on Instagram.
In early September, VH-QQY, an Alliance Airlines Fokker 70 flew down here from Sydney via King Island, I presume on a charter service. I had been planning to actually see it land, however due to a large delay I ended up coming out to photograph it the next day.
After a night in Auckland our travels continued, this time trying out the Air New Zealand A320 domestic product down to Wellington. After arriving at the airport and making our way smoothly through check-in and security, we headed upstairs to the surprisingly plane-spotter friendly Auckland Airport domestic terminal. With many large clean windows looking out onto the apron, taxiways and runway, and with decent lighting I managed to do some plane spotting and ended up with some photos I was very pleased with. The highlight probably being this Air New Zealand 787 Dreamliner.
My first trip out of Tasmania in over two years would see me trying out the Air New Zealand Trans-Tasman narrow-body product.
After arriving at the airport nice and early about 2.5 hours before the flight, we made our way reasonably quickly through check-in and security, before heading through to the main terminal area, where I got a good view of our aircraft arriving from Auckland.
This will be my new style of spotting posts, where I just do one post covering a few months of spotting action at YMHB. Having done a seperate post for a spotting session earlier in July, this blog will cover one session from late July, and one from last weekend!
The main purpose of this first session in July was to see the second ever Virgin Australia Regional flight from Perth. Virgin Australia announced in June that from July 29th to late October the Hobart-Perth route will be taken over by VARA, operated on an A320. This led to a new photo opportunity as although the livery is identical, you won’t see the Virgin skin on a non-VARA A320, which are rarely seen outside of WA.
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