Wellington
All charts for Wellington (NZWN) are available from the VATNZ Website.
Recommended add-on scenery for Wellington is listed here.
Wellington (icao: NZWN; iata: WLG) is one of New Zealand's busiest airports, its central location and capital city status making it a hub for domestic and international flights. Famous for its wind and bumpy approaches, in the sim-world Wellington can be equally challenging and a fun place to fly.
It has one runway (16/34) and is accurately depicted in the default FS sceneries for both FS9 and FSX, as well as X-Plane 10 and 11. In addition, a number of excellent photorealistic sceneries are also available.
Because the runway is only 1800m (5950ft) long, most real-world flights are operated by B763 or below. Larger aircraft can use the airport, but typically have to reduce the weight they carry in order to safely land and depart, making them less economically viable in the real-world.
RNAV Arrivals
Runways 16 and 34 are equipped with ILS and all of the NZWN arrival procedures feed into these approaches. All STARs are now RNAV only. Pilots unable to fly the RNAV arrivals should indicate this in their flight plan, and inform controllers on initial contact in order to receive vectors to the ILS approach.
Flights from Australia can expect to be assigned one of the SIMZI arrivals depending on the active runway.
- Australia → Runway 16: SIMZI THREE BRAVO (SIMZI3B).
- Australia → Runway 34: SIMZI SIX ALFA (SIMZI6A).
Both of these arrivals cross over the northern end of the Southern Alps, the most mountainous section of the entire Oceania region, and there are a series of descent steps specified as part of the arrivals (see the charts above). Aircraft on these arrivals should descend to the ATC cleared level via the published steps.
Departures
Flights to Australia can expect to be assigned one of the following departures depending on the active runway.
- Runway 16 → Australia: DOGBI ONE QUEBEC (DOGBI1Q) Oceanic Transition.
- Runway 34 → Australia: POLAX FIVE PAPA (POLAX5P) Oceanic Transition.
Note: both departures have additional waypoints for the Oceanic transition: see the text description on the charts above.