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Managed to get on the maiden flight today.


Is there really that much demand to fly to the chathams
You guys were so sucked in.......
Maybe we will see the VB 190's one day.
One of my very good friends is the son of the owner and I have been out to the island once so far.
At the moment there is generally 1 convair on the island, 1 in Auckland and 1 in Fiji with the dedicated freight convair being used for parts at the moment due to origins demise and the loss of the associated freight contract. There is also a metro used to pick up freight slack and does some of the charter work. A 206 transports pax, and seafood between Pitt and Chatham islands.
The Chatham island service is quite well used by the locals especially during the school holidays as a large proportion of island children are schooled on the mainland, as stated however freight is the main driving force behind the frequency of flights and CIB can be configured as a combi aircraft.
All flight attendents are based on the island but most pilots are based in Christchurch, Wellington or Auckland, before Origin went under there was an operational base in Nelson. The main operational base is on the Island and the owner has a considerable headquarters complex next to his house which also has apartments for the pilots when they are required to be on the island. They also have a convair sim at the headquarters.
Pilots in the airline come from varying backgrounds and they have a good depth of experience, have had a few move on to Air New Zealand and JetConnect in the recent past, they definately value experience and my mate is accepting of the fact it will be quite a while till he gets a command.
I have a couple of photos I could send you taken in 2005, unfortunately the day we landed the weather wasn't the greatest and I had been in the jumpseat on the WLG-CHC sector so didn't get to jumpseat the approach on CHC-CIC.
The airport is about 30 minutes drive from the main settlement of Te One where the headquarters are.
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