Ardmore, NZ

[wood73]

Hi all, I'm after a little local knowledge.
I will be visiting my sister in papakura in a months time and would like to take her flying (obviously with an instructor).
Can anyone recommend any of the flying schools at Ardmore?

[alex90]

I'll be honest - I didn't like the schools at Ardmore - also it is very busy during the day time (can take considerable time to fuel up - seeing the tacho going up exponentially whilst waiting for a pump to free up was scary) and their landing fees were almost UK prices (which is a bit of a travesty as NZ landing fees were around $10NZ (around £4) in most places.

I hear for about $20 more you could land at Auckland International (when they're not too busy).

I flew from North Shore, which is the other side of Auckland (granted not around the corner from papakura), no landing fees, cheaper hourly rate, really friendly and quite a bit of availability.

If you are on a license from anywhere other than NZ however you will need to do some local training differences. These include at least 2 hours of low flying (below 500ft) which I found incredibly fun, and at least 2 hours of "terrain and weather awareness" which is their way of saying mountain flying / valley flying which was really good fun too! (But no less than 5 hours of both). So if you want to solo in NZ you're looking at least at 5hours dual instruction. To be fair the radio differences, airspace differences, and local knowledge that I gained from doing the training was invaluable, and really good fun. It then took about 5 days to get my validation permit through by email. This could put a spanner in the works if you're only going there for a week or two though!

Hope this helps!
Alex

[India Four Two]

Hi Wood,

Regardless of where you fly in the Auckland area, make sure you get your instructor to take you on a tour of the harbour, Rangitoto volcano and the islands. Wonderful scenery and no ATC, just position reports on a traffic frequency.

[Victorian]

I rented a 152 for a couple of weeks from the Airline Flying Club at Ardmore a while back. I think they were surprised when I actually turned up and suspect NZ flight schools get a lot of wannabe type emails.

As said already, you need to have a couple of weeks in hand if you want to get the NZ licence. Alternatively, you can fly a VLA on a simple permit and a very good friend of mine runs such an operation out of Bay of Islands. Flyitnz.com.