Open Day

On Sunday Air New Zealand opened their engineering bases in Auckland and Christchurch for employees' families and friends. The unfortunate thing though was this coincided with our church's Chinese New Year banquet or lunch or whatever you want to call it! We could have gone to the open day after church finished at midday, but because Aonghas had to work then, we decided to go to the open day in the morning before rushing back to Henderson to drop Aonghas off at work.

We got to the engineering base out by the airport right on 10am which is when the whole thing started. The car park looked empty and because it was raining, I was hoping we weren't the only few people who had turned up! It turned out there were heaps of people there already, but they had parked in the closer car parks! Trust my dad to park a mile away!

After getting through the entrance (we had to line up!) we went in, grabbed a few freebies and then followed the tour. There were displays of various aircraft parts, such as the different seats (jumpseats, economy class, business class seats etc), aeroplane noses, flaps and other bits and pieces. There was also a lab where aircraft toilets are serviced!

Once we got through this maze of aircraft parts displays, we entered one of the main hangers where there was a Boeing 747-400 on display with an extremely long queue! Because we only had two hours to spare, we decided to give it a pass. We had a look around the hanger, where there was a stage with performances taking place, and on the other side was a plane being serviced. We went into the other hanger and there was a Boeing 767-300 (smaller than the 747) on display, and because the queue to check it out was smaller, we lined up. Once we got inside the plane we realised why it was so small! We moved up the aisle extremely slowly inside the plane, but that was all right. It's been years since I've last been in a plane!

As we slowly moved up the plane we pushed various buttons, touched different things and opened other things. As we went through one of those arches (if you can call them that!) we checked out the toilet and our mum tried opening this ashtray-looking thing on the side of the wall but accidentally pulled it out! Fortunately she was able to pop it back in! We finally got to the front where we got to check out the cockpit, where there were heaps and heaps of buttons!

The last thing we did before we had to leave was go on a 'scissor lift', this platform that can be raised almost to the roof. It was pretty cool! We didn't go that high but we went high enough to get a good view of the Boeing 747 right beside the lift!

So the open day was a bit of fun which rekindled my childhood interest in planes! Now if only I had the chance to fly in one...