The top five favourite NZ airliners?

[Dave Homewood]

What are your top five favourite airliners that have seen service in New Zealand, or for NZ airlines?

Personally I think all modern airliners look the same, have little character and are really just buses of the sky. I prefer the older models myself. They simply have charisma. So my top five favourites, based purely on looks, nostalgia, and stories I've read or heard about them, are:

de Havilland DH89 Dragon Rapide/Dominie
de Havilland DH90 Dragonfly
de Havilland DH86 Express
Douglas DC-3 Dakota
Short Empire

What are your favourites?

[Bruce]

Embraer Bandeirante,
Douglas DC3
Short Solent
Fokker Friendship
Lockheed 10A Electra

I chose the Bandit because of my personal connection with them, and thier role in the birth of a deregulated airline industry.
The DC3 was the dependable workhorse that served well for so many years, oozing with class and so significant in our social history.
The Solent was class on a stick - not particularly practical, but set standards you just dont see today.
The Friendship was another workhorse that brought modern turbine airline transport to most of NZ, and well remembered by many, including myself. Big round windows and unobstructed view with the high wing.
The Lockheed 10A, Prewar pioneer and so sleek and advanced for its time. So reliable that people set their watches by them. (I also have a soft spot for round - engined American classics)

[steve]

1. Lockheed Electra (1959)
2. DC 10
3. Short Solent
4. DC8
5. Boeing 737 200 (prob the most imporant change to the local domestic scene)

[Dave Homewood]

Bruce, I flew in a Bandeirante from Hamilton to Auckland back when I was in the RNZAF. It has to have been the rattliest, bumpiest, loudest, noisiest most nausiating aircraft I've flown in. Plus the comfort level seatwise was low too. I found it just how my Dad and others who'd flown in them described. Notoriously awful aircraft.

However, I do agree that it has quite a place in the history of the NZ aviation scene, thanks to Malcolm Campbell and his Eagle Airways. He was friends with my parents since his wife Joan went ot school with my Mum. I always thought as a kid that he was THE 'Sir' Malcolm Campbell!

[corsair67]

Here goes:

DC-3

SAAB-340

Lockheed Electra (the earlier one!)

HS-748

Boeing 747

[Peter Lewis]

bruce said:

The Solent was class on a stick - not particularly practical

By my definition an 'airliner' is a business proposition, a machine that will produce a profit for the operator. If it doesn't do that, then it is just a hobby or a toy. Most early 'airliners' were quite uneconomic, kept aloft only by the unwilling support of the press-ganged taxpayer (a bit like the proposed Auckland stadium).

Given this proposition, I would list my five as:
1. DH83 Fox Moth - the first aircraft in NZ capable of returning a profit from unsubsidised operation
2. L-10 Electra - which made domestic air travel a valid business tool
3. DC-3 - for obvious reasons
4. Boeing 737 - it's speed and reliablity turned domestic travel into a bus service
5. Boeing 747 - prior to the 747, only the wealthy went by air and the proletariat went by ship.