Tiger Moth flights to freedom and romance woo lovers. Eat, play, love, New Zealand

Breakfast at Maple Lodge, above, and Tiger Moth take-off, below.

Be sure to see the great slideshow at the end of this story.

“I say it’s like a woman first thing in the morning — slow to get started.” Peter Hendriks is talking about his red and white flying machine, a 1930s-era de Havilland Tiger Moth.

He’s been cranking her propeller for a couple of minutes to get her started. I’m in the front seat of the biplane. Behind me, daredevil pilot Ivan Krippner who does adrenalin runs in his Pitt Special when he’s not flying Hendriks’ Tiger, is waiting to take off from the grassy runway at Wanaka Airport on New Zealand’s South Island.

Hendriks, who flies seven days a week and everything from the frost-fighting helicopters the wine-grape farmers hire to buzz their vineyards when late frosts threaten their harvest to the sky-diver drop planes that set off from the same airport, owns a company called Classic Flights. He will pilot a second Tiger Moth with a second passenger. We will fly in tandem.

Mostly he takes to the skies with a single Tiger Moth and a single passenger for scenic flip, sometimes with a few aerobatics thrown in, over the town of Wanaka, which sits alongside Lake Wanaka and a section of New Zealand’s Southern Alps.

The tandem flights Hendriks does with Krippner (who has been flying since he was in the womb — his mom flew until she was six months pregnant with him and he grew up on planes) are his eat, fly, love flights. They are for couples with a sense of adventure.

Picnic Flights and Winery Bistro Flights

You get flown by the two pilots to a destination of your choice, which might be a remote spot that nobody has been to before, in which case you’ll be treated to a picnic lunch from a wicker picnic basket; or to any winery with a restaurant that has a runway on its property or nearby.

The Big Picture in nearby Cromwell in wine-rich Central Otago is a popular choice. It has a grass runway. It has a restaurant that serves a platter with house-smoked salmon, venison salami, chorizo, stuffed button mushrooms, marinated feta, selected pickles, aged cheeses, seasonal fruits and quince chutney. It has a unique wine tasting tour.

I’m not doing the custom-designed love flight; or and eat flight. We’ve come directly from nearby Maple Lodge, a boutique bed and breakfast with benefits owned by Bernie and Paul Raymont. Paul, who does the cooking duties, whipped up a mean buttermilk pancake breakfast with bacon bought from a local farmer who specializes in sustainably raised freerange pigs, and scrambled eggs — the eggs laid by the chickens they keen in their large yard with its view across to the snow-tipped Alps.

Best Winery Restaurant

And we’re proceeding after our Tiger Moth flip to Queenstown, two hours by road south, with a lunch stop at Amisfield Winery Bistro, named New Zealand’s best winery restaurant by New Zealand’s Cuisine Magazine two years in a row.

Back to Hendriks’ Tiger Moth. It was built in the United Kingdom, used in the pre-training of World War ll pilots, then shipped to New Zealand, reassembled, and used to train Royal New Zealand Air Force pilots.
The classic plane subsequently had several owners and at one time was used as a crop sprayer before falling into Hendriks loving hands. And restarting its life as a route to romance and freedom for couples.

To share Hendriks’ favorite quote, which came from Leonardo da Vinci: “When you have tasted flight you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”

Story © Wanda Hennig, 2009

Photos: Wanda Hennig

More info: Contact Peter Hendriks through his Classic Flights website. Contact Bernie and Paul Raymont through their Maple Lodge website. Contact Ivan Krippner through Classic Flights or his website. Check on flights to New Zealand here.