Travel book review - Air New Zealand: Celebrating 75 Years

The book cover of Air New Zealand: Celebrating 75 Years. Photo / Jason Oxenham

With the national carrier entering its 75th year, here's a wee stocking-filler for the sky-gawping plane nerd in your life.

Air New Zealand: Celebrating 75 Years is a cheerful pictorial romp through the highlights of three-quarters of a century of big aviation in our skies. From the establishment of Tasman Empire Airways to the arrival of the Dreamliner, the fun parts are all in here.

The book touches only briefly on the subject of Erebus, and the Mediterranean crash of 2008 is barely noted.

So, it's about the good times. And you'd have to be a bit of a Grinch to deny the airline the right to a biography. It's their party, after all, and with new routes opening, new planes rolling down the runway and new profits in the bank they have cause to pop the bubbly.

Not to judge a book by its cover but the front of this one is a little underwhelming. The iconic koru might have been a more simple and striking image. But many of the pictures inside are magic.

Glorious old posters from the great days of New Zealand tourism design, rocking shots of cabin crew in uniforms through the ages (obviously, female staff have had the most radical attire but the bowties of the blokes from the 1960s are wonderful).

Air hostesses model their new uniform for summer, 1959. Photo / Supplied

The images are a neat reminder of how times have changed - like the Buffet List, featuring a cigarette menu (30c for a pack of 20).

And then there are the planes: the Solents of the Coral Route, the DC8s that opened the path to Los Angeles and the big Jumbos (the first kind of plane I ever flew on) through to the 777s that have put the airline in such good health today.

Air New Zealand: Celebrating 75 Years
RRP: $39.99.