Friday 19 December 2014

Hawkes Bay Airport

Yesterday my older son went on his annual holiday to his Grandfathers.  I thought you might be interested in seeing our domestic only airport here in Napier.  Do you have a big airport or a little one near where you live?  

the plane he went on finally there was a delay due to some of New Zealand having bad weather 





History of our airport
Before the 1931 earthquake the land which is now the airport was under the sea
After the earthquake 
In 1932 volunteers from the Napier Aero Club built a new aerodrome.  There was a airplane show for its opening. 
There was a weather bomb in 1938 caused severe flooding.  The building in the middle of the picture was the airport terminal which was a converted tramcar.  In the 1960s solutions were put in place so this wouldnt happen again.  
From 1938 there was a daily service from Gisborne to Napier to Palmerston North on 12 seater airplanes.  The tramcar continued to be the terminal and  taxis took passengers from Napier CBD to the airport.  
In 1953 bigger planes started using the airport as air traffic control started being used full time.   There was now also a new tarmac.  

In 1963 there was a new sealed runway and the NAC Friendship started,  There was a bus especially to get passengers to and from Napier and Hastings to the airport.  Up until now the airport was known as the Beacons aerodrome now it became the Hawkes Bay Airport.  The government and local authorities now ruan it.  
In 1964 the Hawkes Bay Airport was officially opened.





6 comments:

  1. It's quite a lovely airport!

    We have an executive airport over on the Quebec side of the river, and the international airport south of the city. There's also a small airport here that also houses our air and space museum.

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    Replies
    1. the air and space museum would be an interesting place :)

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  2. think the nearest one to us would be Whangarei which is about an hour away or Auckland which is about 2 hours away, other than that Mangawhai is too small to have one.

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  3. I have both BIG and small airports near me. :))

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