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Part 2: Exploring New Zealand’s Grand Islands by Air

If you have the time and money, a flying tour of the country is a great adventure and a true bucket list experience.

Exploring the mountains and fjords of New Zealand on a flying tour was the ultimate bucket list experience. [Courtesy: Sam Weigel]
Gemini Sparkle

Key Takeaways:

  • The author recounts an exhilarating, week-long self-fly tour of New Zealand's South Island with FlyInn, exploring stunning and diverse landscapes including alpine lakes, Fiordland's misty mountains, Mount Cook, and the country's rugged coastline.
  • The flying experience involved dynamic and challenging conditions, such as navigating strong winds and turbulence, ridge soaring, and unique landings on remote strips, cow pastures, and even a sheep paddock, which enhanced the author's mountain flying skills.
  • Beyond the intense flying, the tour offered cultural experiences and wildlife sightings, ultimately captivating the author and his wife with New Zealand's beauty and aviation scene.
  • The author highly recommends the FlyInn self-fly tour as a grand adventure and a true "bucket list" experience for its unparalleled scenery and demanding yet rewarding flying.
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When I left you hanging last month, dear reader, my wife and I and Kiwi flight instructor Matt McCaughan had just taken a Cessna 172 on a tight, slow flight circuit around a cloud-scraped, rock-walled thimble of an alpine lake in New Zealand, exiting with a rakish wingover down the enormous 2,000-foot waterfall cascading from its outlet. This was the fourth or fifth stunning sight in just the first two hours of a planned weeklong flying tour of the country’s South Island with FlyInn, McCaughan’s self-fly vacation operation.

Describing these two hours required three pages crammed with significantly more words than my usual monthly allotment, and yet I promised to cover the balance of the tour in a single additional installment.

Sam Weigel

Sam Weigel has been an airplane nut since an early age, and when he's not flying the Boeing 737 for work, he enjoys going low and slow in vintage taildraggers. He and his wife live west of Seattle, where they are building an aviation homestead on a private 2,400-foot grass airstrip.

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