On Friday, February 14, 2003, at 01:19 PM, Brian Swale wrote:
It is always interesting to get the impressions of ones' country
given by a
visitor who sees the place and the behaviour of the people, with new
eyes
unaccustomed (conditioned) by experience.
For the benefit of those who might arrive by air, may I assure them
that our
airports do indeed have air traffic controllers, but in some wind
conditions at
some airports, the landing process is a highly skilled process
involving the
real pilots in the cockpit who may well decide to abort that
particular landing
run and go around for another try. Wellington is not known locally as
"Windy
City" for no reason :-)
The pilot told me in the airport bar that there were no air traffic
controllers at the time. This was in '98, maybe they were on strike? As
I recall, it had something to do with privatization. This was during
the same period of time that Auckland was dark. When we were there the
company I was with had to bring generators to handle the power draw of
the concert staging they were using. All in all, it was one of those
really memorable trips where a lot seems to malfunction, but it all
seems to add to the atmosphere of the journey.
Beautiful country, though. I think if I were going to relocate to any
place on the planet it would be Wellington. What a lovely city.
Everything you'd expect in a metropolitan city and with wide open
beauty all around it. A little slice of heaven, IMO.
-Rob
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