Susan Buckland: Passionate about Betsy

Why are sailing and smaller aircraft defined as female? Possibly because they respond to loving maintenance and kick into life when turned on by their mostly male owners.

Meet Betsy, aged 60 and still sparkling after all these years. Betsy incites passion among women as well as men. She relishes the attention and has no plans to fade gently into the night.

She regularly takes to the skies from her home base at Auckland's Ardmore Airport, home of the New Zealand Warbirds. She flies her passengers over the city and around the harbour, impressing them with her smooth take-offs and landings and filling them with nostalgia.

For Betsy is a Dakota, born in Oklahoma in 1944 and from her earliest days, transporting WWII troops. Her seats were a lot less cushy then. The change from bench seats down each side to rows of comfortable seats came when she completed her wartime service and took on a role as a commercial aircraft for the Philippines, followed by Papua New Guinea and, later, Queensland.

Then it looked as if Betsy's doughty career was at an end. Forty-something and with plenty more energy to burn, she was shunted into a hangar and there she languished until a group of 50 New Zealand DC-3 lovers came to her rescue. Each paid $5000 to bring her over the Tasman and nurture her back to life. The year was 1987. And born-again Betsy has been proving her worth since.

Most Sundays, weather permitting, she's doing her sightseeing trips. But Betsy has also become a celebrity charter aircraft. For private, business and school social events she turns on a novel and, I'm bound to say, most professional experience.

Betsy took 30 of us to a function in the Far North and ensured that the entertainment began just after take-off with a champagne-enhanced breakfast. Her volunteer crew, qualified commercial pilots and experienced cabin crew, have other jobs but passion for Betsy has them in her cabin and cockpit at weekends. We flew with Captains Geoff Cooper and Warwick Batten at the helm. Cooper is an Air NZ 767 captain and flew DC-3s in the RNZAF. Batten, a former NAC and Air NZ captain who flew DC-3s with NAC, also runs a dance studio with his wife.

Attending to the passengers with friendly expertise were Lesley Brown, a former NAC flight attendant on DC-3s, Viscounts and Friendships, and Jessica Cooper, wife of Captain Geoff and a former Air NZ flight attendant. Every weekend she is either flying in or marketing Betsy. And during the week she is snatching time for Betsy business between running her full-time massage and sports therapist job. Life is full-on for Lesley Brown, too, who works full-time as a nurse at Ascot.

When needed, Betsy's crew takes days off work sometimes to fly the Dakota. They pour the income back into the old girl. And build her custom with a focus on safety, service and a bit of military history.

As an ex-service aircraft, she's a stalwart member of the NZ Warbirds Association. However, her spruce D-Day livery is going to change to the colours the DC-3s sported back in the early 50s when they toured the Queen around the country.

Her Majesty would have flown in comfort. The decommissioned DC-3s became the backbone for many commercial airlines and, in Betsy's cabin, the seats are generously spaced. Definitely not deep vein thrombosis territory.

On the return from the Far North we were served muffins with afternoon tea. And hot towels. And smiling courtesy. And nostalgia.

It will cost to buy Betsy her new frock, of course. And she needs a hangar. But passion will find a way. She's the only DC-3 flying commercially in New Zealand. Betsy is living history.