Napier judged one of the most turbulent cities in NZ to fly into

A landing at Hawke's Bay Airport. Photo / Paul Taylor

There's ups and downs to living in Napier - take the flights in and out as an example.

MetService meteorologists have named Hawke's Bay Airport as one of New Zealand's five potentially most body-shaking places to fly into.

It's fair to say it's a title that not everyone in the city is celebrating, and not everyone in the city believes to be true.

But from canvassing the region, there appears to be little doubt that when the ferocious spring nor'westers are running hard, things can get hairy.

While not adjudged to be top of the bumpy class, Napier has staked a place, and as one of the MetService's meteorologists pointed out, it's all down to location, location, location.

Each of the top five spots for knuckle-clenching departures and arrivals are to the immediate east of big mountain ranges.

And when the nor'westers grow strong they surge over the ranges and generate gusting turbulence, and that greets the aircraft passing through.

Occasionally can get wet and windy out there at Napier's top five bumpy spot but no real dramas. Photo / Warren Buckland

An aviation meteorologist said low-level turbulence was like water flowing over rocks in a stream, so the faster the flow, and the bigger and rougher the rocks, the bumpier things became further downstream.

The top of the class airport for a turbulent experience has been picked out as Wellington, which comes as no surprise as the northwesterly and southerly winds which charge through Cook Strait are pretty constant.

Dunedin was deemed second on the list as, in the words of the meteorologist "when it's extreme, it's extreme".

Napier effectively settled for a reasonably even joint third with Christchurch and Queenstown to make up the top five.

Which for newly elected Napier mayor Kirsten Wise was just fine and dandy and she laughed it off.

"Oh you get the occasional rough one coming in here," she said, adding that one simply just had to go with the flow ... literally.

"And hey, being able to make a top five is always something," she laughed.

"So yeah, we'll take it."

A regular user of Hawke's Bay Airport through his busy work schedule is Napier MP Stuart Nash.

"I fly all around the country every week but Napier is not an airport I associate with bumpy flying," he said, adding that flying had never worried him and if there were some "moments" up there he just pulls the seatbelt a little tighter "and hold on".

Nash said he had often flown out of centres where the weather was rough but 90 per cent of the time the arrival in Napier was to fine and sunny skies.

Flying in and out of Wellington?

"Oh I've had a number of rough flights there."

He agreed that the capital was number one when it came to often providing a jolting arrival or departure.

Queenstown had also thrown a couple up but Napier's delivery of rough ones was rare, he said.

He agreed with the met boffins that it generally tended to be a seasonal thing when the nor'westers ramped up.

Another regular caller at Hawke's Bay Airport, given he is based there as its chief executive, is Stuart Ainslie and he said there really wasn't anything in the MetService picks.

The weather was one of those ingredients of aviation which could not be controlled although it did not create many issues here.

"We get the odd sort of weather event but no different to anybody else."

This week has produced a few weather moments, with driving rain from the east along with winds, which caused delays and a flight to be rerouted to Palmerston North, but for the most part things ran smoothly.

Even flights to Wellington, which one meteorologist has dubbed as "consistently turbulent", have been mostly on schedule this week.