With the nation desperate to limit the economic damage from COVID-19, Perth Airport has been working hard to keep essential resource industries operating smoothly in its vast home state. Ranked as the world’s biggest producer of iron ore and lithium and the second biggest supplier of liquid natural gas (LNG), Western Australia’s importance to the national economy is underscored by record 2019 resources sector sales of $163.7 billion. The need to keep ...
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The Australian Airports Association recently heard from one regional airport that is faring better than others in this time of COVID-19. They still have air services to their community, although there are fewer flights, fewer passengers and more freight these days. They are working hard to keep the airport open to keep essential services going and are holding on to every flight that they can in order to maintain their supply chain. ...
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Melbourne Airport chief strategy and development officer Simon Gandy looks out at what just weeks ago was a thriving mecca of arriving and departing flights and sees a giant parking lot. The airport is now home to more than 50 parked aircraft and the circa 540 domestic aircraft movements for which it normally caters have been reduced to a similar number of flights. Passenger numbers are down from about 100,000 a day ...
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The red dust of the North-West iron ore town of Port Hedland is a long way from the pastures of Hamilton in Victoria but an airport mentoring program has bridged the continent-spanning distance. It’s a program that Southern Grampians Shire Council Asset Coordinator Mary Irwin and Port Hedland International Airport General Manager Rod Evans have found enjoyable and valuable. The Australian Airports Association hosted the program in 2019-20 to support professional growth ...
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Co-funding arrangements, staff retention and maintaining regulatory compliance are among the issues facing regional airports as they grapple with the fallout of COVID-19, according to AAA NSW Director Julie Stewart While regional airlines have received $198 million in targeted Federal government aid, Stewart says the only Federal subsidy available to regional airports is the JobKeeper package and not every organisation will be eligible. She also warns that many existing grants available to ...
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It was a Friday evening when the first Qantas Boeing 737 flew into Victoria’s Avalon Airport to be parked as a result of the COVID-19 crisis. Airport chief executive Justin Giddings and his staff went out to watch with mixed feelings. “We were sort of excited that these aircraft were coming in and then when it landed and taxied in, all of a sudden it turned to sadness,” he recalls. “You realised that ...
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More than 200 heavy machines engaged in the herculean task of moving millions of cubic metres of earth have heralded the start of major construction on a project that has been waiting to be born for more than 70 years. What was known for so long as simply the second Sydney airport, now has an official name — Western Sydney International (Nancy-Bird Walton) Airport. Joining mentor Sir Charles Kingsford Smith in having ...
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The major construction work is done, the date is set and the wait is on for the rubber to hit the runway. The first commercial flights are scheduled to land and take-off on Brisbane Airport’s new runway on Sunday 12 July as a long-term project that will deliver huge advantages to the region finally comes to fruition. Described by Brisbane Airport Corporation chief executive Gert-Jan de Graaf as an “infrastructure masterpiece”, the ...
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Outgoing NT Airports chief executive Ian Kew began his aviation career in a year that more than most earned the lament: “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times”. It was the dawn of airport privatisation in Australia, an era unfettered by established business practices and ripe for innovation. It was also the year Ansett collapsed and the televised horror of 9/11. It was 2001, not long after ...
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Anything that delays work on airport infrastructure is normally a cause for gritted teeth and dark mumblings. But it’s a different question when that cause happens to be rain in previously parched areas of regional New South Wales. Dubbo City Regional Airport had begun work on the latest of an impressive list of recent improvements — its regular public transport (RPT) southern apron expansion — when the long hoped-for rain arrived and ...
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