Ohakea airshow

[ratanab]

I don't know about you guys, but I think it would be great to see another airshow at Ohakea in the near future. Anyone else agree?

[beagle]

people would say only if everyone parked in the city and they just put lots and lots of busses on.

[jp]

the traffic chaos at the last one would probably put me off - and the lack of "thinking on your feet" to sort the ensuing mess was underwhelming too....

[corsairarm]

I prefer it to be at Whenuapai.
A bigger catchment area and better roads now that the motorway just about goes past it so won't have the same traffic problem at the last show there. Ohakea will probably still have a traffic issue.
Also only 15 mins from home. ;D

[saratoga]

Ohakea used to have airshows every other year, no problems with traffic.
The only 2 shows with issues were the 1981 and 2012 ones,both after extended periods of no shows.

[beagle]

so how do they get on with these big airshows around the world like Farnborough, Paris and Avalon.
traffic wise I mean. Has anyone here been to any of them and driven .

[jp]

Drove to RIAT at Fairford once - from London (not Napier - that would just be silly) - last few miles from the motorway were down very narrow country roads, and the traffic still flowed better than at Ohakea. Having more than one gate open into the car parks probably helped. Viewing the static park (about 250 aircraft) after the flying displays were over meant the car parks were nearly empty when it was time to leave.
Also driven to the Biggin Hill airshow, Reno air races, and Flying Legends and not had a problem with getting in/out....

[Dave Homewood]

I would hope that after the Ohakea traffic experience the RNZAF has learned not to leave the job to civilian "professionals" and the ATC. The RNZAF used to have its own people controlling traffic and it used to always work smoothly, why change what works?

I agree that Whenuapai would theoretically be better now that the major traffic chaos caused by the Hobsonville motorway works is over and done with. Whenuapai is a better venue for an airshow in some ways. It would be good if they went back to the two year thing, with Whenuapai and Ohakea alternating an airshow each year. But I don't think the budget will allow it nowadays.

[kiwithrottlejockey]

One of the best organised airshows as far as transport to and from the event I have ever been to was the 1988 Bicentennary Airshow held at Richmond in NSW. On the two main public days of the airshow (a Saturday and Sunday), all private motor vehicles were banned from going anywhere near Richmond and free trains were put on to a station just short of Richmond (I cannot recall the name of that station all these years later) where temporary platforms had been built to handle really long trains, and a fleet of around 600 buses were used to shuttle airshow patrons from the trains to the airfield. As each train unloaded, it pulled further up the line towards Richmond and parked behind the train in front of it, then at the end of the day the trains departed in reverse order, filling up with passengers from the free buses and away they went. I seem to recall that the number of people at the airshow was six figures, yet they shifted them all really efficiently. Also, the Richmond line wasn't electrified then, so they simply used diesel locomotives to haul the trains (which were mostly Sydney subbies) beyond the end of the overhead wires.

We also went on each of the trade days prior to the public airshow days and although people could drive to the airshow on those days, we chose to use the train and connecting bus and got there heaps quicker than friends from NZ who were also attending and who chose to drive to the airshow.

[delticman]

Did you go with the Wings group? The trains were like the old days as the Diesels only worked the brakes and not the doors. I was there on the Thursday and Friday and on the Sunday we went to Schofield and did the rows. That airports gone now. Then we went to Scone and met a guy called Ray Mulqueen who was debating with himself to go back to New Zealand and work on Tim's Mustang!

[kiwithrottlejockey]

Feb 2, 2013 13:40:24 GMT 12 delticman said:

Did you go with the Wings group?

No....I went with a bloke who was my flatmate in Gisborne at the time. We flew over to Brisbane and stayed at my brother's place for a week, then I got a free first-class rail pass for both myself and my mate (perks of the job, one of the reciprocal agreements we had back then) and we headed down to Sydney on an overnight train (we had a free first-class twinette sleeping compartment) where we crashed at another mate's place. We had Gold Passes for both trade and public days of the airshow and went every day. We were staying up at Manly, but got a bus to North Sydney each day, then caught a train from there. The only other people from NZ I knew at the airshow were a few members of the Gisborne Pilots Association who had also headed over there for the airshow. The week after the airshow, I scored another free first-class rail pass for myself and my flatmate to head down to Canberra for the day. We caught the first train from Sydney in the morning, and spent almost the entire day at the War Memorial Museum (including persuading one of the museum workers to show us behind the scenes where they were working on a few aeroplanes, and had others in storage), then we caught the evening train back to Sydney.

[phil]

Jan 30, 2013 2:02:26 GMT 12 Dave Homewood said:

I would hope that after the Ohakea traffic experience the RNZAF has learned not to leave the job to civilian "professionals" and the ATC. The RNZAF used to have its own people controlling traffic and it used to always work smoothly, why change what works?

I suspect because of some H&S requirement to have a traffic plan done by someone with a certificate in traffic management.

As opposed to an organisation that has been running air shows there for more than 60 years.

The Roads haven't changed much in 50 years, the way they always did it is still the best. Pitty it wasn't done that way in 2012.

I'm sure the year I was involved with traffic we had the traffic from the south turning of SH1 at Speedy Rd and coming up Tangi Rd to go around the back of the airfield, then into the triangle near the Tangi Rd end.

The south bound passing lane from the Bulls bridge to the turn off to the main gate was closed as a passing lane and turned into an extended right turning lane for traffic coming from the north, who were fed into either the triangle or the airfield down the SH1/3 end.

The traffic coming from Palmy was turned off SH1/3 onto Frecklington Rd or some other access point before Pukenui Rd.

I'm not 100% sure if that is all correct, but it was something like that, which basically meant that Sanson didn't become a log jam of traffic caused by the Wellington and Palmy traffic trying to merge 5kms from the airfield.

It wasn't perfect, the Rds around the airfield aren't designed for that volume of traffic, but it wasn't the cluster they experienced in 2012, which I'm sure they've learnt from.

[phil]

Jan 29, 2013 18:57:31 GMT 12 saratoga said:

Ohakea used to have airshows every other year, no problems with traffic.
The only 2 shows with issues were the 1981 and 2012 ones,both after extended periods of no shows.

My Dad who grew up in Foxton told me of a show that must have been in the early 50s, that had a number of visiting American aircraft in attendance, where they only got as close as the Himatangi straights due to the traffic, and watched the air show from there.

[Peter Lewis]

Jan 29, 2013 18:57:31 GMT 12 saratoga said:

Ohakea used to have airshows every other year, no problems with traffic.
The only 2 shows with issues were the 1981 and 2012 ones,both after extended periods of no shows.

Involves what is called LCM - Loss of Corporate Memory.

After a period of time, there is no-one left in the organization that was there last time and can remember how it was done. The good and the bad.

They should repeat the exercise in the near future, while there people around who can remember what went well - so we do that bit again - and what went wrong - so we do that bit some other way.

[sqwark2k]

I would hope that after the Ohakea traffic experience the RNZAF has learned not to leave the job to civilian "professionals" and the ATC. The RNZAF used to have its own people controlling traffic and it used to always work smoothly, why change what works?

I think you'll find ATC did not have anything to do traffic and/or parking. NZCF were invited to attend the 75th Airshow in uniform for free without having to "work" for the experience While I was there it was the RNZAF/Army doing the internal car parking. It wasn't smooth by any stretch of the imagination, but they were given a lemon to start with due traffic plan.

I left late from Palmy at 0915, and when we struck tail of the queue, we googled the local map and used back roads to be parked by 1030, watching the opening display of the hunter from the rear perimeter road.

[mumbles]

Feb 3, 2013 8:01:14 GMT 12 sqwark2k said:

I would hope that after the Ohakea traffic experience the RNZAF has learned not to leave the job to civilian "professionals" and the ATC. The RNZAF used to have its own people controlling traffic and it used to always work smoothly, why change what works?

While I was there it was the RNZAF/Army doing the internal car parking. It wasn't smooth by any stretch of the imagination, but they were given a lemon to start with due traffic plan.

They may have been handed a lemon, but they didn't do themselves any favours either. Both the directing and control of traffic once on base and the way they decided to fill the carpark were verging on incompetent and both exacerbated the problems outside in my opinion.