VARA will take over from parent airline Virgin Australia next month From July 29th, operation of Hobart’s longest route will pass to Virgin Australia’s Perth based regional subsidiary, Virgin Australia Regional Airlines, formerly Skywest. The 4 hour and 50 minute flight will be flown by VARA’s seven strong fleet of Airbus A320-200s, most of which […]
Hong Kong’s flag carrier has resumed the service for the summer, with new aircraft After the success of the flights over the 2020/2021 summer season, Hong Kong based Cathay Pacific have resumed the service via Melbourne for the 2021/2022 summer. with at least 35 flights up to January 31st to be operated in conjunction with […]
Flying home on Jetstar’s workhorse After a very, very, brief 5 hour visit to the capital of South Australia (including a visit to the South Australian Aviation Museum), I headed back to Adelaide Airport to fly home on the evening Jetstar flight to Hobart, onboard one of their ubiquitous Airbus A320-200s. Earlier in the day […]
Every airline, livery, and aircraft I’ve photographed at HBA Although I do intend to do a complete run down of all of Hobart’s Covid related special visitors at a later date, this post will be more of a personal record of my sightings at Hobart. As such, I have included some lower quality photos from […]
How to get here and what to do when you are At first glance, my home state of Tasmania is, well, a bit dry for the average aviation enthusiast, but when you take a bit of a closer look, Australia’s island state is home to a rich variety of airlines, aircraft and airstrips. From the […]
To the Harbour City and back on Jetstar’s A321 Late last month, I finally got to try out the Airbus A320’s biggest sibling, the Airbus A321-200, with Jetstar return to Sydney. Upon checking in at Hobart Airport, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Jetstar still issue proper card boarding passes, unlike the flimsy paper […]
Air New Zealand’s first Auckland to Hobart service touches down Earlier today, at 10:43 AM AEST, the first scheduled international passenger flight to Hobart since 1998, arrived from Auckland Mangere Airport. The 214 seat Airbus A321NEO, ZK-NNA had the honour of operating this historic hop across the Tasman, a flight years in the making. By […]
From TAA to Cathay, a comprehensive history With the announcement that Air New Zealand will start flying to Hobart again in mid April, after a 23 year hiatus, I thought it would be a good idea to take a deep dive into the history of scheduled international flights to Hobart Airport. The vast majority of […]
Settling into the new normal at HBA Despite the absence of any particularly unusual arrivals this week, I still managed to photograph five aircraft I haven’t had the opportunity to before, as well as finally getting to see a QantasFreight departure! Formerly Virgin Samoa’s sole aircraft, from March 2015, to the end of the airline […]
Some really, really unexpected visitors Welcome to the first spotting update of 2021! What a phenomenal week of spotting we’ve had at Hobart Airport to start off the year too! As well as the continuation of the Cathay Pacific cargo flights to Hong Kong, there have been a few surprising arrivals, although I didn’t catch […]