Landing a 747 on grass
Last weekend I continued my quest to scan more old photos, especially slides, so that more people, especially family and friends, could see them. I was particularly excited to unearth slides from my very first trip to New Zealand, in 1986. Viewing them brought back so many memories. At that point in time, my sister, Becky, was nearing the end of her first pregnancy. My niece, Lucy, would be born a month or so after I flew back to the States. She and her husband, Martin, had been married in May and I was the first one in my family to have the opportunity to visit them.
One of the funny memories I had relates to the flight from Los Angeles to Christchurch on Air New Zealand. (There was direct service then between the two cities; nowadays, you can’t get a direct flight to Christchurch and instead have to go through Auckland on the North Island.) I remember Becky telling me before I left home that I wasn’t to expect much of Christchurch, that the airport was really small and was out in the country. The flight I took was called at that time the Coral Route on Air New Zealand, which meant that I had stopovers in Hawaii and my choice of at least one other South Pacific Island, in this case, Fiji. I had never travelled overseas before and the flight was very long and I felt cramped and restless in the Boeing 747. You can imagine the excitement I felt when at long last, I spotted New Zealand out my window!
The photos below were taken from the plane as we came in for a landing in Christchurch. As we flew lower and lower on approach, I was amazed at the plains stretching out below me (what I later learned was the Canterbury Plains) and the endless number of sheep grazing in the various fields. I began to panic a little bit because we were literally only about 100 feet from the ground, almost at the point of landing, and nowhere could I see a runway or an airport! I remembered what Becky told me about the airport being small and the thought crossed my mind, and I half-believed it to be true, that maybe the runway was made of grass! I thought, wow, the pilots will be landing a 747 on grass!
Of course that turned out not to be the case. The plane landed safely on a regular ol’ runway after all, one that seemed to appear at the very last possible second before we hit the ground. But the memory of that approach to Christchurch will always be in my mind when I think of that trip!
