An end of an
era was signalled on 24Sep (2007) with the last commercial flights of the Saab 340A
with Air Nelson. Saab 340A ZK-NLE
flew its final revenue flight from Wellington to Nelson as NZ8197 whilst the
last ever Saab 340A commercial service was flown by ZK-NLH as
NZ8161. Thus concluding 17 years of
operation spanning some 500,000 flights. However! With the grounding of a number of Eagle Air
Beech 1900D’s 25-27Sep, ZK-NLH was pressed back into service and on 27Sep it
positioned to Wellington as NZ8952 from Nelson, then flew
Wellington-Timaru-Wellington-Timaru-Wellington-Gisborne-Wellington in lieu of
Beech 1900’s! It then positioned back to
Nelson as NZ8951.
ZK-NLE had
accumulated 43840.58 hours and 55234 cycles on arrival at Nelson 24Sep.
At the time Air Nelson had just taken delivery of its 18th Bombardier Q300 on 09 Sep when C-FLTZ arrived at Nelson from Pago Pago and entered service 24Sep as NZ8148 from Nelson to Wellington registered ZK-NEU. That week the parent airline, Air NZ, announced the initial order for 21 aircraft would be increased by two.
