A mission to return six special commercial planes home to New Zealand is being described as the country's "greatest airline treasure hunt".
The treasure is six former Air New Zealand planes that are part of our aviation history, Seven Sharp reported.
Aviation enthusiast Paul Brennan said it started with a simple discussion with some other aviation enthusiasts, wondering what happened to the last remaining members of our original airliner fleet.
"And we expected that we wouldn't find any, that they would all be gone. But after a little digging we realised that there was just one copy left of every model remaining in the world. And that caught my attention."
The six planes not only took Kiwis to the skies, they brought us closer together, and closer to the world.
"If you see The Beatles arriving in New Zealand they're coming in on the Electra," Mr Brennan said.
The DC8 was the plane that few the Royal family around the Pacific and delivered them to Christchurch for the Commonwealth Games in 1974, he noted.
Captain Gordon Vette saved a life from the cockpit of the DC10, he recalled.
"The Hawker Siddeley 748 launched the Mt Cook Airline services that built the South Island tourism."
And anyone who's been on an OE from New Zealand probably departed on an Air New Zealand 747, Mr Brennan reckoned.
After serving our country, the planes were shipped off to all corners of the globe, some living colourful second lives.
The DC8 has been in Brazil and was converted into a freight plane in South America.
Mr Brennan is on a mission is to save them from the scrap and the weather, put them on display and give the next generation of travellers a window seat to the past.
The cost of bringing the planes home is put at $1 million, which is why he's after koha to bring our birds home .
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