No extension for Wellington runway?

Press, 26 March 1981, Page 4

No extension for Wellington runway?

By LES BLOXHAM travel editor. The Prime Minister (Mr Muldoon) confirmed, this week a prediction made by “The Press” 18 months ago that Qantas’s new Boeing 7475 P service to Wellington would eliminate the need for a longer runway at Rongotai.

Mr Muldoon said on Monday that he considered it unnecessary to extend the runway now that the special performance jumbo jet was flying to Wellington. “We have nothing in front of us at the moment ... I don’t think we would really contemplate it,” he told the political reporter of the “Dominion.”

“The next step in Wellington, I, guess one of these

days, will be a new domestic terminal,” said Mr Muldoon. The Government had spent $2 million preparing Wellington Airport for the Qantas

service, he said, adding that i he thought there was now ; not much pressure in the 1 capital for a longer runway, i “The Press” predicted in a i front-page report on October

5, 1979, that the New Zealand taxpayer would be spared the substantial cost of extending the runway if Qantas gained approval to use the special performance

Boeing at Wellington. The Mayor of Wellington (Mr Michael Fowler) said the new service had made no difference to the airport’s need to be able to invite and accept larger wide-bodied jets.

(The existing 1935-metre runway would have to be lengthened by at least 200 m before Air New Zealand’s DCIOs could use the airport commercially. A proposal for a preferred extension of 380 m has been studied, the cost of the work being estimated about $25 million.) Mr Fowler said Mr Mul-

doon had a short memory if he thought there was no longer a need for the extension. Referring to the Government’s decision to. approve in principle the 1000 m exten-

sion to Christchurch’s main runway, Mr Fowler said: “I have to congratulate the Christchurch lobby: it obviously packs more political clout than the Wellington lobby, our local members of Parliament.”