Sunday, 27 December 2015

Auckland International Today - Something Else.

Airwork Flight Operations Ltd of Auckland now has seven Boeing 737's in their fleet.
Their latest addition is this 737-476 model (c/n 24444) which was rolled out at Boeing’s Renton Field on 09-03-1993 to be registered as VH-TJS to Australian Airline on 12-03-1993. Its first flight was on the 23rd
It ferried out of Boeing Field to San Francisco, Honolulu, Apia, Nadi to arrive in Melbourne on 16-04-1993.  It was given the name ‘Jabiru’ and it commenced passenger service on 20-04-1993. Australian Airlines were merged with QANTAS on 31-10-1993. 
This was the last of the Classic Boeing 737-400’s to see service with QANTAS being withdrawn from service on 23-02-2014 after a run from Canberra to Melbourne. A couple of weeks later it was ferried from Sydney to Apia, to Honolulu on 06-03-2014 and then on to Victorville in California the next day for open storage. 
It was registered in the States as N944NZ on 02-02-2015 and hidden in the records of the Bank of Utah Trustees and was ferried over to Dothan in Alabama for freighter conversion to first fly as such on 04-12-2015. It was then ferried from Dothan to Oakland, Honolulu, Pago Pago and into Auckland on  07-12-2015. 
Registered in NZ as ZK-PAK on the 9th it did its first freight run from Auckland to Christchurch on the 15th in its all-white colour scheme.
Above is the Boeing 737-3B7 ZK-TLA (c/n 23383). This airframe first flew as N377A on 28-07-1987 and then went to US Airways as N508AU. In October of 2004 it was transferred to Wells Fargo Bank Northwest NA Trustees and appears to have gone into storage.
On 21-04-2007 it gained its NZ  CofA and became ZK-TLA on the 23rd to Airwork Holdings Ltd and then ferried from Opa Locka in Florida to Long Beach then out to Honolulu, Pago Pago and to Brisbane on the 24th. It carried out its first freight run on 01-05-2007 from Brisbane to Sydney. It is now Auckland based with Airwork Flight Operations Ltd.

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