Plans for air force’s old Hercules transport planes For sale, as is and where is
For sale, as is where is: four vintage Hercules airplanes that have been lovingly maintained but are past their use-by date.
The Defence Force has listed for sale four of the 60-year-old Hercules aircraft, the workhorses of the air force fleet, in anticipation of the arrival of five new C-130J Hercules later this year.
The aircraft were not listed on Trade Me or Facebook Marketplace, with a request for prospective buyers posted on the Government’s tender website earlier this year. Tenders closed at the start of March.
A January briefing to Defence Minister Judith Collins, obtained under the Official Information Act, shows that the Defence Force intended to sell the transport aircraft and their parts on an “as is, where is” basis. Of the total fleet of five Hercules, two had already been withdrawn from service in February and November 2023 due to their age and condition,
The video shows four young women, dressed up for a Friday night out in central Wellington. They explain that they tried to call the owner of the phone they have just found, but were unable to.
“We’re trying to call your number but ... we don’t know [it],” a young woman in a red top or dress says. “If this syncs to someone’s iCloud ... just send us a number,” says another.
Luckily, the lost phone has found its way home to its rightful owner – acclaimed film director Dame Jane Campion.
Campion emailed the video yesterday, saying she wanted to track down and thank the girls who saved her a lot of difficulty. “I was incredibly grateful to those who helped get my phone back, as the drama of cancelling credit cards and replacing iPhones is as we all know is truly burdensome and expensive,” she wrote.
Campion won Best Director at the 2022 and to cannibalise them for parts for the remaining three aircraft.
The Defence Force said it would also
Academy Awards for her most recent film, The Power of the Dog, which was also nominated for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay.
She explained that last Friday, she dropped her iPhone on Cuba St, with her credit card attached to the back of the case.
After realising it was missing on Saturday morning, the director searched for it using the “Find My Phone” app on her iPad.
She managed to track it to Logan Brown restaurant on Cuba St. Campion was then told that four Good Samaritans had handed her phone in at the restaurant, hoping the owner would return for it.
But that isn’t all. Campion discovered a video saved on her device, showing that the people who had found her phone and credit card were “a gorgeous group of Wellington young women”.
Now Campion said wants to track down the women so she can offer them a reward “in gratitude for their honesty and kindness”.
“These ladies are my heroines!” look to dispose of parts and specialist tools from the Hercules that could not be sold “due to security or legal considerations”. Any parts that would be of use in the replacement aircraft would be kept. It was expected that the old Hercules would stop being used at the end of January 2025.
While four will be sold, the fifth will be provided to the Royal New Zealand Air Force Museum Trust for display at its museum in Wigram, alongside a retired P-3K2 Orion surveillance aircraft – a model recently replaced by new P-8 Poseidon planes.
This was deemed appropriate “in view of the long service and immense contribution to New Zealand by the C-130H Hercules aircraft”.
It is not unusual for the Defence Force to sell assets it no longer needs. In 2022, it announced the sale of two inshore patrol vessels, HMNZS Rotoiti and HMNZS Pukaki, to Ireland.
But that was not an “as is, where is” sale. The two vessels were sold for $36 million, on the condition that $16m to $19m was first spent on modifying the vessels in New Zealand shipyards.