Tower ready for first takeoff
Nelson Airport’s new $6 million air control tower may also represent the last of its type.
Following a dawn blessing at the site with local iwi, Airways board members joined airport staff, Nelson MP Nick Smith and regional mayors Richard Kempthorne and Rachel Reese for yesterday’s official opening.
Opening just a few days after Wellington’s distinctive leaning structure, the $6 million Nelson tower is likely to be the last bricks and mortar air traffic control tower to be built in New Zealand.
Airways is looking to introduce digital tower technology, starting with Invercargill in 2020 and a contingency digital tower for Auckland around the same time. Digital towers allows controllers to direct air traffic from a remote location.
Airways chief executive Graeme Sumner said the new building sent ‘‘a real message’’ about the development of the Nelson region, as well as the future of air traffic control.
‘‘Any time it comes to deciding whether to put up an edifice like this, it’s more likely that we’d do a digital one, so in the next fiveyear time frame you can expect things to be largely digitised.’’
The tower was funded by Airways and built by local firm Gibbons Construction, as part of Nelson Airport’s $32m redevelopment project, which includes a new terminal and infrastructure upgrades.
The six-level, 22-metre high tower has an eye level – where the controllers work – of 17.3m, almost double the height of the previous tower. Four staff will man the high-windowed cab in two shifts between 5.45am and 10pm.
Designed by architects Studio Pacific, work began in December 2016 to replace the previous control tower, which had been located on top of the old terminal since 1974.
Air traffic controllers are completing final training before they begin managing live traffic from the new tower on Sunday. They will manage around 125 takeoffs and landings from the airport each day, and 46,000 flight movements annually.
Airways chief air traffic controller Adam Arnold-Kelly said the technology was essentially being transferred over from the old tower, which will be demolished with the old terminal building in the coming weeks.
Radar systems currently in use will eventually give way to a satellite-based system as part of a $120m investment in air traffic management upgrades – the first major one in 15 years. The Nelson tower needed to be replaced before the technology had advanced sufficiently, Sumner said.