– Ex-All Black Israel Dagg sells his dream home t<\/a>o close to family<\/p>\nThe passionate aviator quit his job as TVNZ\u2019s weatherman 22 years ago to move home to New Plymouth to look after his elderly parents.<\/p>\n
Hickey and wife Sue sold everything in Auckland and bought the leasehold land and built a customised commercial hangar with a unit on top. Hickey said it had been a really convenient location because he only had to walk 150m to catch a commuter plane to Auckland for part-time presenting gigs.<\/p>\n
Hickey told OneRoof he was already in throes of planning his next home in New Plymouth – a modern replica of an early settlers cottage. While being a new build, the couple wanted the home to feature reclaimed vintage artefacts such as old doors and even a fireplace sourced mainly in Taranaki.<\/p>\n
Hickey said the aim was to \u201ccapture a pinch of pioneer architecture \u2013 stuff largely exterminated by avaricious developers\u201d. <\/p>\n
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Hickey used to store his Yak 52 at the hangar, but since selling the plane, he rents out the space to other pilots. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n
![\"Jim](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/9f45d9099a5a6fe9abc8ee4668455bde.jpg\")
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The leasehold property is within walking distance of New Plymouth Airport. Photo \/ Supplied<\/p>\n
Hickey told OneRoof last year that his apartment was also close to the New Plymouth branch of Airspresso \u2013 an airport cafe the Hickeys co-own with Ozone Coffee Roasters owners Kate and Craig MacFarlane.<\/p>\n
He said a throwaway comment to Craig, who was in the hospitality industry, led to the launch of the business. \u201cI happened to say to him what many people say, \u2018Why is it you can never get a decent coffee at an airport?\u2019 It was almost a cliche.\u201d<\/p>\n
The brand now has cafes in Dunedin, Hawke\u2019s Bay, Nelson, Queenstown and New Plymouth.<\/p>\n
Hickey told OneRoof that his years by the airport meant he could identify what planes were landing by the sound of their engines alone.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can tell when an Air New Zealand arrives with an ATR or a Dash 8, the Q300 with 50 seats, or one of the ATRs with 68 seats. You get to know them all. And when the Yaks [Soviet era planes] go up, they sound like little V8 cars \u2013 quite noisy, rumbly little things. There are two or three of those here.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe get a few corporate jets coming in. There are some big engineering outfits here, and the oil and gas sector.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou get to know them all. I grew up loving aeroplanes. My father was a Spitfire pilot in the war, and I\u2019ve been flying for many years, so you just get attuned to it.\u201d<\/p>\n
– Click here to find more properties for sale in New Plymouth<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"– Former TVNZ weatherman Jim Hickey sold his hangar home overlooking New Plymouth airport to a local pilot.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":276101,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,1258,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-276100","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-latest-news","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-top-news","12":"tag-top-stories","13":"tag-topnews","14":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/276101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Jim](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/f961f091a936e1a32407215076c3d74f.jpg\")
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