Wellington International Airport

Press, 30 August 1977, Page 20

Wellington International Airport

Successive Governments have been pressed to improve Wellington's airport and the capital at last can look forward to the building of a long-overdue passenger terminal. Everyone who uses Wellington Airport will welcome this improvement The next major question is whether Wellington should continue to be an international airport. The Ministry of Transport is inquiring into the possibility of extending the runway at Rongotai so that at least Air New Zealand’s wide-bodied airliners can fly in and out of Wellington. The plan being investigated by the Ministry is to extend the runway by bridging the roadways at each end. This is not a great novelty in airport construction, though it would certainly be an expensive job. Even if it enabled Air New Zealand to dispose of the smaller DCB airliners that it retains solely because of Rongotai’s limitations, Wellington would remain an airport with grave deficiencies. Serious thought should be given to ending Wellington Airport’s place In international services if large sums have to be spent on runway extensions. By almost any standards that are acceptable in other parts of the world New Zealand would be well served by the international airports at Auckland and Christchurch. Although Air New Zealand runs flights to and from Wellington across the Tasman, and between Wellington and the Pacific Islands, these services are maintained entirely by three aircraft retained at considerable expense by Air New Zealand. If the extensions to Wellington were made to suit the newer and larger airliners in

the Air New Zealand fleet, the airport would still be closed to the larger Qantas airliners. One alternative to maintaining the smaller DCS airliners and to enlarging the Wellington runway is to permit one of the Australian internal airlines to cross the Tasman. Both Ansett and Australia’s national airline, TA.A., fly aircraft that could supply a satisfactory service. This course is unlikely to appeal to Air New Zealand and Qantas, both of which would prefer to preserve the trans-Tasman business for themselves, particularly because their larger airliners can now carry a useful volume of freight. A make-shift extension of the Wellington Airport—and an expensive extension at that—should be put aside in favour of concentrating international flights upon Auckland and Christchurch. Capital expenditure might be needed to augment the National Airways Corporation fleet to move international passengers between the southern part of the North Island and Auckland. This course seems preferable to a costly struggle to keep Wellington on the international airline map. Wellingtonians would be no worse off than citizens in many of the world’s capitals, and they would reach an international airport—by air—more quickly than passengers in many much larger cities can reach their local airport by ground transport. When all the costs have been weighed the closing of Wellington to international flights might even mean that air transport to Christchurch from Wellington would be more economical than financing the maintenance and expansion of Rongotai for larger aircraft.