Social Media post by RNZAF:
By the numbers. All our Royal New Zealand Air Force aircraft have a unique serial number that follows our Defence Force convention. An important step in the construction of our new P-8A fleet is allocating the tail numbers, which will have the numbers NZ4801 – 04.
Broken down this means:
✚ NZ – the prefix for NZDF
✚ 4 – denotes the aircraft’s role of maritime, our current P-3K2 fleet uses a 4 in the same way
✚ 8 – this denotes the aircraft type in this case 8 was available and made sense to use it given it is a P-8A fleet
✚ 01-04 – these final two numbers are the sequential tail numbers.
Serial numbers previously allocated to RNZAF maritime aircraft include:
✚ NZ4001 to NZ4056 | PB2B-1 Catalina
✚ NZ4101 to NZ4120 | Short Sunderland MK III and MR.5
✚ NZ4201 to NZ4206 | Lockheed P-3K Orion
✚ NZ4501 to NZ4639 | Lockheed PV-1 and B-34 Ventura
✚ NZ4701 to NZ4704 | Lockheed PV-2 Harpoon