Runway length details soon?

Press, 2 December 1981, Page 6

Runway length details soon?

The Civil Aviation Division’s idea of at proper Christchurch Airport runway length may be disclosed to City Council officers later this month.

Although the council knows that it will get a runway extension, the Government has not yet agreed on the extension length proposed earlier this year by officers of the Civil Aviation Division of the Department of Transport. But the Director of Civil Aviation, Captain E. T. Kippenberger, has requested a

Christchurch meeting on the issue on December 15. v,“I suspect he is coming down to tell us what the runway length will be,” the Airport Director (Mr M. W. Atkinson) told the public utilities meeting yesterday. He still thought that the “bugbear” in the issue was the vastly increased cost of the Civil Aviation Division's share of the runway project. That share had jumped from about $700,000 to about $3.25 million. Mr Atkinson said , he thought that progress on the runway extension project would be made after the meeting. City councillors and othe” South Island interests want a runway length that will allow fully laden wide-bodied jets to make non-stop flights from Christchurch to Singapore and Hawaii. The Government has always asked which airlines would want to use such a length, but the council has argued that all its airport facilities were completed before the demand for them grew. Cr Geoff Stone said that the Government’s attitude was “a bit like telling a married couple not to buy a two-bedroom house because they don’t have any children at the moment." South Island interests have said that facilities must be committed before airlines will make commitments to use them. Tenders have already been called for a Harewood Road deviation project that will allow a maximum extension length of 1217 metres, and the runway project itself can go to tender as soon as the Government gives its consent.