Flying New Zealand: Stewart Island Flights, Flight 162 bound for Invercargill

After a awesome couple of days on the incredibly breathtaking Stewart Island, it was time to head back to the mainland. We were booked on the 1.30pm flight. The weather had packed in, and it was super windy. The Ferry had been cancelled, and the early morning flight went missed and returned back to Invercargill. Things were not looking promising, and this was a worry. Whilst I could think of worse places to be stuck an extra night, this would play havouc with our schedule. We had to drive back to Queenstown that night in order to catch the first flight out of there the next morning. However, just before 1.00pm, the weather disapated, and it was looking good. Check in for our flight was at 12.50pm. Same drill as before, bags weighed, we were weighed.

I had a really good chat with the Check In Gentlemen, who told us that both Islanders and the Piper Cherokee were all on there way. One Islander was to remain on Rakiura, while the other one and the Piper were taking the people on our flight back to the mainland. About 15mins before departure, we were driven up to Ryans Creek Aerodrome in the SIFs Van. We sat on the road and a minute later we heard the roar of engines and our Islander, ZK-FWZ flew right over top of us and landed, in a pretty gusty wind. The passengers and bags were offloaded, and we were loaded. We took off to the south and had a very scenic, albeit turbulent climbout