Heyado75's 1998 Australian flightplans

[heyado75]

Hi All,

Coming from Australia, there has been a noticeable gap in accurate 1990s flightplans from our corner of the world. Having been a long time creator of flightplans for personal use, I figure there might be some other simmers who would also get good use from them.

I'm a collector of airline timetables, as opposed to OAG's or other compilations, and much of my collection is made up of Ansett Australia timetables. We already have the late-90s Qantas network timetables from Chasen's excellent project, so here's the opposition so to speak.

This first post is the Ansett Australia mainline network as it existed in mid-1998. By this stage Ansett was once again an all-jet airline consisting of 747s, 767s, A320s, 737s, BAe146s and a couple of F28s.

Liveries for everything are available on Avsim.

Download Ansett Australia 1998 flightplans.

[smiley]

Thanks you so much for these from a fellow aussie.

[heyado75]

Next in the series is Kendell Airlines. In 1998, Kendell had a large presence across South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and NSW. By this time they were operating the Capital Shuttle between Sydney and Canberra.

Avsim has a Fruit Stand version of the Saab 340 in Ansett livery, but as of right now doesn't have the Metroliner. In 1998 Kendell's Saabs and Metros wore a variety of liveries - some in the Ansett colours but others still retained their 'heritage' Kendell red and black livery. These might be a task for the talented repainters if they feel inspired.

Download Kendell Airlines 1998 flightplans.

[cgold]

I painted the Ansett-colored Metro using the Saab-340 as a guide. You can find it in my signature’s Google Drive link. Thank you for the FP’s!

[heyado75]

Now to Skywest Airlines. Skywest can trace its origins back to the 1960s as an air-taxi operator in Western Australia. Acquired by the Ansett Group in 1987, Skywest was the ultimate destination for most of Ansett's Fokker 50 fleet after they had been withdrawn from mainline service on the eastern seaboard. The F50s proved their reliability in Skywest service, surviving into the Virgin Australia era. In 1998, the Fokkers were augmented by a small fleet of Jestream 31s, which were in the process of being gradually withdrawn. The Fokker 50 has been painted by Retro AI repaint maestro cgold in Ansett colours with Ansett Australia titles - in real life they carried Skywest Airlines titles. To the best of my knowledge there are no repaints of the Jetstream anywhere on the web.

Download Skywest Australia 1998 flightplans.

[chasensfo]

Awesome! Thank you so much! AU and NZ are of great interest to me being 2nd generation American Kiwi, and the airports usually get good FPS with high traffic in the sim as even SYD doesn't have too much other traffic loading all over the place the way a US or EU metro area often does. A lot of international carriers doing domestic AU legs as tag-ons back then and doing AU-NZ stuff as well.

Also, thank you for paying attention to detail with the callings! For those unaware, all AU these airlines used the tail number as the callsign for all domestic flights in 1998 (excluding tag-ons from international flights like SIN-CNS-SYD). I see VHHH being used instead of Kai Tak in the Ansett plans though. If you're OK with it, I can add these to the 98 thread adding in the livery variations and giving you full credit.

[heyado75]

Not a problem at all Chasen, I'm a huge fan of your monumental project! I note your point about Hong Kong VHHH - I have it like that because I don't own any version of Kai Tak so I just used the current airport instead. Anybody who wants to change it to VHHX for full authenticity is most welcome to do so.

[heyado75]

One of the benefits of owning an Ansett Australia timetable is that you get the entire Ansett New Zealand network along with it. Poor old Ansett NZ had a troubled existence, wasn't a huge profit generator and had to compete with Air New Zealand. Starting out in 1986 with a couple of 737-100s, they were replaced with a mix of BAe 146s and Dash 8s. Wikipedia has a good explanation of the troubles that overtook the airline. In fact by June 2000 they were out of business, sold off and rebranded as a Qantas franchise.

Included here are both the Ansett NZ and Ansett NZ Regional network, made of up of a couple of small carriers flying mostly Bandeirantes that fed into Auckland and Wellington.

Download Ansett New Zealand.

[heyado75]

Next we come to Hazelton Airlines. Hazelton traced its origins back to 1953 as a charter operator. Airline operations began in 1975, with a focus on towns in central western NSW. By 1998, Hazeltons had a fleet of 8 Saab 340s, 4 Metro 23s and one Piper Navajo on a network that reached as far south as Traralgon in Victoria and up north to Gold Coast and Brisbane. None of the fleet at this stage wore the Ansett colours, all aircraft carried some version of the Hazleton livery. To the best of my knowledge, there are no AI repaints of the Hazleton fleet known to exist.

Download Hazlelton Airlines 1998 flightplans.

[heyado75]

I should just briefly mention that all of these flightplans were planned by hand in AI Flightplanner. None of it was done using automatic processes. This is because during this era Ansett and the other airlines would schedule multiple legs carrying the same flight number (ie: Hobart - Melbourne - Sydney or Melbourne - Sydney - Brisbane), and the automatic flight planning tools split these up across separate aircraft, meaning you can have two aircraft in the air at once carrying the same flight number. Planning by hand also ensures that the correct aircraft appear on the correct routes they used to operate.

[heyado75]

Time for another flightplan, and today we come to Flight West Airlines. Operating a network centred on Queensland, Flight West entered the jet age in 1998 when they bought/inherited three ex-Ansett Fokker F28s and took over the route from Brisbane to Norfolk Island. You'll notice the usage of the F28s is quite low, as at the time the Ansett Australia timetable was published they were still being integrated into the Flight West operation. Designing the flightplans for Flight West was challenging, as while they were recognised as an Ansett Australia partner, not all of their services appeared in the timetable. Most of the missing services are contracted by the Queensland state government, so I've used the timetables for the current contracts (flown by Rex Airlines) to plug the gaps, choosing to ensure that the ports served in reality by Flight West all get some flights. It was a tradeoff for coverage versus reality, something which many AI flightplanners have to deal with at some stage. Aside from the F28s, Flight West used Brasilias, Jetstream 32s and was gradually reducing its King Air 200 fleet as more Jetstreams were delivered.

Again, I'm not aware of any repaints of Flight West aircraft floating around in cyberspace.

Download Flight West 1998 flightplans.

[heyado75]

Next up is Aeropelican, an airline that formed part of the Ansett group and flew Twin Otters on their sole route between Newcastle's Belmont airport and Sydney. (Belmont is known today as Lake Macquarie airfield - code YLMQ).

Download Aeropelican 1998 flightplans.

[chasensfo]

These are awesome. Reminder for those using P3Dv4+ that my drive contains a 1998 backdate of FlyTampa's YSSY which will look great with these plans and the representative Ansett plans retired. When I have a chance, I'll add these to the 1998 thread with routemaps and repaint links as well as livery variations.

Thank you so much for these. With Kiwi roots and lots of family in the WLG area, I am very excited to see this part of the world that was largely neglected for the late 90s until eth72s made QANTAS and you came along with these. Very appreciated, and once BGL file traffic is working again offline in MSFS, I'll be very motivated to install these lol.

[heyado75]

Now to another carrier whose network only partially appears in the Ansett timetable, namely Impulse Airlines. Impulse operated a network of services to ports mostly on the coast north of Newcastle through to Brisbane, though they did also serve some inland destinations such as Tamworth, Glen Innes and Taree as well as routes from Newcastle to Canberra, Newcastle to Melbourne and Wollongong to Melbourne. The Impulse fleet as of 1998 consisted of 12 Beech 1900Ds, plus 1 Beech 1900C with a further six 1900D's on order. As with Flight West, some research combined with creative license was needed to fill the gaps in the Impulse network that weren't included in the Ansett timetable.

There are no known repaints of the Impulse fleet currently in existence.

Download Impulse Airlines 1998 flightplans.

[heyado75]

On with the show and next we come to Tamair. Based in Tamworth, Tamair operated service between Sydney and Tamworth, Glen Innes, Inverell and Sale with a small fleet of Metroliners. Tamair actually went out of business on 14 August 1998, but as they appeared in the Ansett timetable effective 29th March we are effectively representing Australian airlines that existed as of March 1998, so they're in.

No repaints of the Metroliner in Tamair colours are known to exist.

Download Tamair 1998 flightplans