I flew up to Auckland from Tauranga, and connected to my Kaitaia flight. The Weather in Auckland was real gloomy!!!
NZ2602 Auckland to Kaitaia, Beechcraft 1900D ZK-EAP, Seat: 3F
Departing Auckland on a gloomy morning
More Pics of Auckland City
Above the Cloud layer at FL210
Powering North
Kaitaia Airport is run by Serge and Susan Wintraecken, Susan taking care of inside matters, and Serge handling Ramp Duties. Kaitaia is served by two Beechcraft flights from Auckland on Weekdays, and one on weekends. The couple work seven days a week running the airport. This is the second time I have flown to Kaitaia, and was still wowed with the friendly Northern hospitality of the Airport staff. Turnarounds in Kaitaia are 20minutes. Baggage is unloaded onto a trolley and wheeled into the carpark. the terminal is tiny!! But very cute!!
The Boarding call for my return flight was Susan going around telling everyone they can board now. Love that!!
The flight up to Kaitaia had only me and two other people onboard. I paid $29 for my ticket! Very loss making service. The flight back to Auckland had 8 people onboard, I really cant help feeling that Kaitaia will fall victim to the same fate as Masterton, Oamaru and Wanaka. With flights operating with so few passengers!! Kaitaia is definitely a Eagle port, demand would never grow to the point of having a Q300 or ATR being profitable on the route. Especially when the Beechcraft is no doubt making a consistent loss. It saddens me to think of all these ports that are losing their air services. The Far North is a low economic area, meaning bus and car travel will predominately have trumps over air travel.
On the grapevine, it is true Kaitaia is struggling, and also is Timaru and Westport. I really hope things improve!!
It was a great route to fly, and a awesome little airport. I really enjoyed it, and long may the Kaitaia-Auckland link continue.
Thanks for the trip report Liam... I am surprised they ran a Monday morning service up and back to KAT on the morning of Queen's Birthday... hopefully the evening flight would have had better loadings
ReplyDeleteHi Steve! The evening service had 7 outbound and 9 inbound. Under half for both flights :( I am more convinced that it is only a matter of time before we see more scalebacks in terms of flights and centres being flown too. I think back a few years and Wanaka, Masterton and Oamaru were all still on the network (all at the same time). It will be interesting to see what happens over the next few years with Eagle, and also with some of the smaller Airlines :)
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