Air travel might be impacted by the wintry weather moving into the country over the next few days – but generally conditions don’t look too extreme at some of our most exposed and busiest airports. 

It’s not the job of forecasters to tell you if your flight will be on time or not but we can take a look to see which airports are most exposed to wintry weather – to perhaps help you plan better.

The wintry outbreak brings a mix of snow, gales and severe ice to some airports – but many others have fairly normal travelling weather.  Below are the latest forecasts – and our general thoughts on conditions, but please remember no one can answer if your flight will leave on time until the moment of departure, when it’s up to the pilot and airline to make that call – not forecasters.

AIRPORT WEATHER:

• Queenstown Airport – Not a huge amount of snow, but plenty of ice with overnight lows down to -10 likely at the airport over the weekend there might be delays due to de-icing both planes and the runway.
• Dunedin Airport – Snow showers off and on across Thursday and Friday but hopefully not enough to cause serious problems. Keep up to date with the weather forecast & current weather conditions though, as you never know when the snow might set in a bit and this could affect some fights, especially smaller prop planes.
• Timaru Airport – A few snow showers on Friday, generally not too heavy but might cause possible delays with  smaller aircraft until conditions clear. Some risk for delays.
• Christchurch Airport – A little bit of snow possible on Friday but at this stage doesn’t look too problematic. One to keep an eye on though.
• Wellington Airport – Snow is above 300m so that’s well above the airport, but the gale force SE winds could cause a few delays, mainly with smaller aircraft on Friday night or Saturday.

– Image – Still from YouTube video showing how clouds impact the atmosphere – click here to view.
– WeatherWatch.co.nz