Wings Over the Water

THE AIR CHATHAMS GROUND OPERATIONS STANDARDS MANAGER doesn’t know what exactly it was that put flying in his blood from a young age, but the urge to be airborne remains as strong as ever.

“I can’t put my finger on anything in particular,” Cameron says, “but during high school something just clicked and I knew I wanted to spend my life working in aviation. Initially I wanted to be in air traffic control, but after I’d done a few flights at the aviation club I thought, bugger, that I want to be up in the air not down on the ground in the tower!”

And he’s been up in the air ever since. A stint at a major hardware chain was the springboard to enter the industry and he joined the Air Chathams family in 2018, working first as a ground handler and then in the Flight Operations team for four years. He now oversees ground handling and check-in training, compliance and standards, team management, and dangerous goods acceptance and compliance. “What I love about the company is the family atmosphere and the sense that we’re all working together, working to connect people. Our regions rely heavily on aviation to keep them going, and it makes you kinda proud to be a part of that.”

Working with a team with a sense of purpose is also what attracts Cameron to his side gig - which is even more focused on connecting people - as a volunteer with Auckland Coastguard Air Patrol. You may immediately think of boats when you hear their name, but the Coastguard NZ charity also has two Air Patrol units which operate two Cessna 182 aircraft, one stationed in Kerikeri and the other at Ardmore in Auckland. These planes are operated by volunteers and patrol and train on busy summer weekends and maintain readiness for active callouts during the week. The Coastguard’s marine craft safely brought home a staggering 7,196 people last year - and their eyes in the sky are a vital part of that.

“I got interested in it after hearing some of the ‘war stories‘ of some of the Coastguard air crew,” Cameron says. “It sounded great - a great way to do what I love but to be helping people at the same time. I started out as a rear observer and was trained in search and observation techniques. For example, we’re trained to scan the ocean from the wingtip to the window, as opposed to sweeping horizontally, because it keeps your eye focused. If you are not doing this your eye naturally goes out of focus, but you won’t actually notice that it has, and when you are looking for a single person in a very big ocean that is not ideal!”

Cameron then moved into the Inflight Coordinator role, which saw him managing communications between the observer, the pilot (who is concentrating on flying!) and the ground-based control centre, who are coordinating the air and sea aspects of the search. Then two years ago, he moved into the hot seat as pilot.

“We usually fly at 500 feet, while the lowest level of flight generally followed by private aircraft is 1,000 feet. And we’ll be doing what is called ‘contour flying’, which is one of the four main search patterns we will do: coastline search (aka contour flying), parallel line search, expanding square from a point, and sector search from a point. In places like Piha near Auckland, contour flying puts us below the level of the cliff face - which is pretty interesting! And there have been times when we’ve had to turn back because of weather conditions, which is disappointing, but we don’t want to become the subject of a search ourselves.”

The majority of searches carried out by the Coastguard’s Air Patrol units are for boats overdue or in distress, with the planes helping to locate the vessels and relay coordinates for Coastguard rescue vessels. But the aircraft are also called on to locate missing divers, rock fishers or swimmers. In these cases the aircraft - once they have located those in the waterwill circle as long as possible before on-water volunteers arrive, but if they are low on fuel they can drop flares and dye packs to make those in the water easier to see.

“What I like about it is that once we are deployed, we are very mission focused,” Cameron says. “The whole crew in the air and volunteers on the ground or on the sea and water are working together to try and get someone home to their loved ones.”

And over 2023/2024, the Air Patrol units responded to 53 incidents and helped to bring 96 people home to their loved ones. That took a total of 4,304 volunteer hours - but for all those involved it was clearly worth it.

To help support Coastguard or to become a volunteer yourself, go to www.coastguard.nz