The retirement of the Boeing 737 from Air NZ service continues with -33A ZK-NGR being the latest to exit the airline's service.
MSN 27460 started out life back April 1998 and was built to order for AWAS. It was delivered to Air Malta as 9H-ADI on 22 May 1998 and remained in their service until its departure to Air New Zealand a decade later. It was placed on the NZ register as ZK-NGR 02 May 2008 and ferried to New Zealand by Southern Cross as SXI819 departing Malta for Al Ain on the same day it was registered. It then arrived at Jakarta/Halim 03 May from Al Ain via Nagpur then onto Christchurch arriving the next day via Cairns.
Its first day of service was 08 June 2008 when it operated as NZ542 from Christchurch to Auckland.
With ZK-NGR signing off this leaves the Air NZ 737 fleet standing at just three units - ZK-NGG, ZK-NGI and ZK-NGJ. However the schedule for the 737 was reduced to only require three aircraft from 21 March with the fourth covering planned maintenance activity until Romeo's exit. However as per all good plans the 4 aircraft ended up on scheduled services 26 March covering for domestic A320 maintenance.
ZK-NGR's final day of flying was 28 March with the jet starting off as NZ411 from Auckland to Wellington, then NZ420 to Auckland, NZ427 back to Wellington and finally NZ345 Wellington to Christchurch.
ZK-NGR's final day of flying was 28 March with the jet starting off as NZ411 from Auckland to Wellington, then NZ420 to Auckland, NZ427 back to Wellington and finally NZ345 Wellington to Christchurch.
Another aircraft is set to finish up in May with the last two slated to exit the schedule in early September.
On the subject of Air NZ 737's, ZK-NGP was finally cancelled from the register on 17 March 2015 to become N175CR having been in storage at Goodyear, Arizona since October last year.
And finally, Ex Air NZ 737 ZK-NGH has been delivered to Nauru Airlines as VH-YNU and arrived at Brisbane 18 February.
