Well as some of you may know last week I was away on holiday visiting family in Hamilton.
I departed Dunedin on NZ632 direct to Auckland on a 737-300. Then I had what was supposed to be a 10min stop for my connecting flight to Hamilton turned into a 1 hour delay (not sure why) but every beech flight which was departing around 12pm was delayed at Auckland, anyway got there in the end.
Last Thursday I went up to Auckland to visit a friend of mine who's a Second Officer on the Boeing 777-200ER with Air New Zealand, because he had organised for me to finally get to climb a board a 747-400 & 777.
So I arrived at the airport at 12pm, met up with my friend and we proceeded over to the Air New Zealand simulations building which holds the a/c simulators. We looked at the 777 Sim which was cool, then we moved onto the security check-point at the maintenance hangar, and I was given my passes.
We strolled down the driveway and soon enough I was walking right under the belly of a 777!
I could hardly contain myself, I just wanted to see everything on the plane, and after getting a turn in the Captains seat we moved through the rest of the aircraft including the crew rest areas, which are cleverly located above the overhead cabins.After the 777, it was then time to proceed out to the big baby, the 747-400 refitted! Now this baby is huge. She has about 10 or so seats across, and holds around 400 people. Anyone guess where I looked first?
The Flight Deck was a little smaller than anticipated, in actual fact the 777-200 flight deck has more space, but I guess this is due to the fact the nose of the 744 is slightly 'skinny'. Anyway had a play in there, my friend even fired up the E.F.B or Electronic Flight Bag, a computerised version of airport, en-route charts etc, and very cool.After the 744 we headed over to the 2nd Air New Zealand simulation building, and looked at the 767, 733 & A320. I was lucky enuff to be sitting in the Captains seat in the 733 sim when the maintenance fellow came along and jumped into the sim and fired it up and we did a circuit of Queenstown, whilst I helped him with flaps etc.
Well without further adue, here's the photos. BTW my friend was taking most of the photos and I had to set the camera to 'Auto' and it constantly wanted to use the flash, so I apologise some shot's have a bright white background, but you'll get the general idea as we didn't have time to much around with settings on camera.
Cheers, and I hope you enjoy.
