Patrick W from Christchurch has sent in these shots of two snowbirds at the Garden City 19 December.
The first is Airwork's all white Boeing 737-300 freighter ZK-FXT making the first of its three return trips from Auckland hauling mail and general NZ post freight. It usually only sees itself flying at night but with the festive season just around the corner it has had an extra rotation added to its normal routine.
The second snowbird is Skytrader's Airbus A319LR VH-VHD, callsign "Snowbird 1". It returned to Christchurch from Melbourne 17 December and departed Christchurch at 2312 local time 19 December for Pegasus in Antarctica and is as this blog post goes to air well on its way back to Christchurch. This aircraft has been very busily employed on operations on behalf of the Australian Government in recent weeks with it regularly seen at Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean, a few trips to Sri Lanka and across to Nauru.
Skytrader's are in the process of taking delivery of a second A319-132LR, VH-VCJ c/n 1880 with the aircraft already on its delivery flight to Melbourne from Shannon, Ireland.
