After more than 100,000 take-offs and landings and 60 years in the air, New Zealand is finally saying farewell to its fleet of C-130H Hercules aircraft this week.

The five Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF) transport aircraft are making several flypasts around the country as the curtain comes down on more than 155,000 accident-free hours of service globally.

The planes flying over the city and the Sky Tower. Photo / Hayden Woodward

“It’s an incredible record considering some of the challenging and often inhospitable operating environments,” Chief of Air Force, Air Vice-Marshal Darryn Webb said.

“Beyond the vast accumulation of data lies mission purpose, and for many, life-changing assistance provided by those who support, maintain and operate our C-130H aircraft.”

The fleet officially retired at the end of January and the planes are taking the nationwide bow before travelling to RNZAF Base Woodbourne, where four of them will remain. One will go on display at the Air Force Museum in Wigram, Christchurch.

Webb said the Hercules had clocked up midwinter Antarctic rescues in minus 35C temperatures, many disaster-response missions across the Indo-Pacific, short-notice evacuation tasks, such as Kabul in 2021, and had operated in many combat zones.

“As the crews recount these missions throughout every corner of the globe, it is the unique tasks that often get talked about the most, such as the recovery of victims from the Mt Erebus aircraft disaster in Antarctica [in November 1979] or loading 120 people out of Banda Aceh after the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami, where one survivor brought his pet monkey,” he said.

“There was airdropping a bulldozer to the remote Pitcairn Islands in the Pacific, moving crocodiles and an elephant to wildlife reserves, and my own personal experience of a live and very unhappy pig as a gift from Bougainville Islanders.”

In 2020, the Government announced the ageing fleet would be replaced by five new C-130J-30 Hercules.

The last of the new aircraft arrived in December, allowing the C-130H to take a well-earned retirement.