Tuesday, 28 May 2019

ZK-IPJ at Ardmore 28-05-2019

Advanced Flight of Pikes Point Auckland has acquired three Bell 429 Global Ranger's to cover their new contract for the Police Air Wing operation.
ZK-IPJ2 (c/n 57049) is the last of the three to be registered.
All three had Canadian registrations followed by US civil registrations and then Australian registrations before being inducted into the Royal Australian Navy.
ZK-IPJ2 began as C-GFNO followed by C-GLIK, N455NB and then to VH-NPR on 20-03-2012 with Raytheon Australia Pty Ltd.
It joined the Australian Navy as A49-049 from 05-06-2012 with 723 squadron.
At the end of its lease it re-entered the Australian civil register on 03-04-2019 as VH-IWT back with Raytheon via the ANZ Banking Group.
 The photo below (thanks to Raytheon Australia) shows it in Australian Navy markings but still wearing its US civil N455NB markings.
It will be interesting to see what marks these helicopters wear on their new Police role.
The previous machines as operated by Airwork wore no civilian registration - just carried 'Police' titles followed by a number.

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