Falcon Aircraft Services Embraer Lineage 1000 (E190-100ECJ) A6-HHS arrived at Auckland 08 November from the Gold Coast marking the first visit to New Zealand by the corporate variant of the popular E190 110-seater regional jet.
This particular example has visited Australia previously, with its first recorded arrival back on 29 June 2011 at Sydney from Singapore. It was to later visit Brisbane and Melbourne and departed from the latter on 18 July for Singapore. Earlier this year it was back at Brisbane arriving on 11 February from Juwata, Indonesia and departed three days later for Singapore.
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| Arriving at the Gold Coast from Singapore 05 November 2012 |
New Zealand has only had a couple of visits by the regional jet version, the E190, with now defunct Australian operator SkyAirWorld bringing the first example across the Tasman on 23 December 2008 when VH-SXK arrived at Hamilton from Brisbane and Sydney. It was then to visit Dunedin on Christmas Day 2008 and Invercargill three days later before heading to Palmerston North, Hamilton and ultimately Sydney on 30 December.
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| VH-SXK arriving at Hamilton 23 December 2008. |
The second visit was by a Virgin machine on its delivery flight to Australia. VH-ZPM, in Pacific Blue livery, arrived at Christchurch 05 May 2009 from Lihue and Pago Pago having departed from Sao Jose Dos Camp a few days earlier and stopping off at Barbados, Fairfield (Iowa) and San Jose. The E190 was then visited Wellington and Auckland the next day then flew to Hamilton 07 November where it ingested a bird and remained overnight for inspection before heading to Invercargill and Christchurch the following day. It crossed to Brisbane 09 November. Its visit was around the time Pacific Blue (then NZ arm of Virgin Australia) was speculated to be looking at regional NZ as part of an expansion to their domestic operation.
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| VH-ZPM departing Auckland 07 November 2009. |
