Auckland to Queenstown flights mark 30 year anniversary

Air New Zealand marked a "momentous" anniversary in Queenstown yesterday, celebrating 30 years of a direct jet service between the resort town and Auckland.

The first scheduled jet landed on the Queenstown Airport runway two years after the national carrier, Mount Cook Group, started flying Boeing 737-200 hush-kitted jets to the Wakatipu.

 

Air NZ domestic general manager Scott Carr said the October 17, 1994 landing was "a huge leap forward, technically", and subsequent technical developments had ensured Queenstown’s connections to the world, and vice-versa, had continued to improve.