11 October 2010

Once upon a Kiwi Airliner #2


Resident in the Queensland Air Museum at Coloundra in Australia are some ex-New Zealand airliners. This is the second example of photos sent to me by Kelvin Paterson, now living in Australia and features Fokker F.27 Mk 400 Friendship VH-WAN (c/n 10315) which operated in New Zealand as VH-FNQ and ZK-RTA.
 
Prior coming to New Zealand VH-FNQ was operated by Ansett of Australia. Ansett had intended to operate it as a freighter but instead it was leased to New Zealand's Safe Air to replace an Argosy which was out of service. It was ferried to New Zealand on the 6th of December 1989 and was in service with Safe until the 19th of May 1990 after which the aircraft returned to Australia. It was photographed above at Christchurch on the 6th of March 1990 by M Beaven.

In November 1990 the aircraft was sold to Ansett New Zealand Air Freight Limited who registered it as ZK-RTA and operated it under contract by Rex Aviation (N.Z.) Ltd. At that time Rex was wholly owned by Pacific Aviation Pty Ltd, Sydney, which was owned in turn by Ansett Australia Holdings. Australia. The registration ZK-RTA is derived from the initials of Ansett New Zealand Air Freight's Operations Manager, Ross T. Allen. Initially the aircraft operated with Rex Aviation titles as seen above at Christchurch on the 15th of May 1991 - Photo : S Lowe. The aircraft was later rebranded with Ansett Air Freight titles as seen below at Nelson on 27 March 1992. Photo : M Beaven


The aircraft returned to Australia on the 31st of March 1996 whereupon it was registered VH-WAN to Independent Air Freighters Pty. Ltd. It is seen as VH-WAN at Coloundra on the 19th of September 2010. Photo : M Beaven

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