As he made history yesterday by becoming the first person to fly across New Zealand’s Cook Strait in an electric plane, Gary Freedman thought it only fitting that the first thing he saw when approaching the Wellington coastline was the rotating blade of a wind turbine producing renewable energy.
Freedman’s 40-minute solo flight in a small two-seater came 101 years after the first person flew a conventional aircraft over the body of water that separates the South Pacific nation’s two main islands.
The flight was aimed at drawing attention to the possibilities of greener flying and timed to coincide with the opening