Out with the Old

In an earlier post, I documented my lucky sighting of the then-brand new Lockheed C-130J-30 Hercules at Woodbourne back in September of 2024.

Wind the clock forward to February of 2025 and we get to see a farewell flight from the final three C-130H(NZ) Hercules. They made tours around the country over several days, doing low fly-bys over many towns and cities.

I was out on the Wellington waterfront to capture them.

A Bluebridge Cook Strait ferry heads out of the inner harbour as NZ7001, NZ7003, and NZ7005 arrive with an orbit of the harbour. Here they are approaching Seaview. (See map below.)
Making the run in to the city, the trio are framed by the container port’s cranes.
Just off Queens Wharf.
Passing over the city, with the iconic mast from TEV Wahine in the foreground.

The flight had left Invercargill in the morning and flown up the east coast of the South Island as far as Kaikoura before looping over Wellington. Their final destination was Woodbourne.

This map shows the orbit over Wellington. The position shown is at the time of the first photograph above.

Map from FlightRadar24.com showing the track taken by the formation over Wellington.

Comments

Leave a Reply

Discover more from ZK-ARJ

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading