Let’s make the airport really fly

A good piece of advice handed down from generation to generation is that if you’re going to do a job, you should do it once and do it properly.

If you apply that folk wisdom to all the news coming out around New Plymouth Airport this week, you’d probably conclude there’s been a piece of the puzzle left missing during the debate.

In case you missed it, two key developments came from New Plymouth District Council’s Tuesday meeting.

First, the councillors approved a $28 million design for the long awaited terminal upgrade, an expansion that would make it almost three times its current size. Previous plans to include a lengthened runway in the upgrade are not included in this price tag.

The next day, after a behind closed doors discussion at the end of the meeting, it was revealed that the council had been offered the opportunity to purchase the Crown’s half of the 50:50 owned airport, for a cool $3.25m, and had found it an offer too good to refuse.

Both are good moves. Anyone who has used the airport in recent years will know that it is no longer a suitable gateway for a region that is positioning itself to capitalise on an expected influx of tourist dollars.

The councillors made the right choice in voting for each opportunity. Mayor Neil Holdom has made no secret of the fact that looming on his agenda are some big decisions around future infrastructure needs. The terminal decision is the first example of this coming to fruition, while the chance to take full control of the airport puts its future squarely in the hands of the province that uses it.

It allows the airport’s owners to make some bold choices they may not have had the ability to make in the past.

Holdom also told his councillors, in urging them to approve the upgraded upgrade plans, that it was time to show courage and to make a statement with an airport. No argument here, but again, do it once and do it properly.

Why not take the opportunity to lengthen the runway, as the business community called for last year and which has been incorporated in previous upgrade plans, from its current 1300 metres to allow bigger planes in. Let’s take it a step further, and seal the crosswind runway while we’re at it.

Certainly they’re two expensive projects. The most recent reported estimates put the costs at $3.3m to extend the runway to 1500m, or $9.6m to extend it to 1700m, and about $7m to seal the crosswind runway. But, if you can pull an extra $9m out of a hat to pay for revised upgrade plans, then surely it’s not an impossible ask to find the rest.

If you’re spending $28m now, you may as well just spend a bit more and do it properly. Because when you come back to do it, in five, 10 or 15 years you can all but guarantee those cost estimates will have gone up by millions again.

There may be land difficulties with iwi to negotiate too. But Holdom’s statement that Puketapu hapu was on board with the decision to buy out the Crown indicates the door may at least be open for a discussion.

Benefits include the opportunity to develop air freight business, and the improved ability of planes to negotiate rough weather and make safe landings.

After all, no traveller is going to enjoy a swish new terminal when they’ve just been bussed into it from Whanganui or Auckland because their plane couldn’t land.

That’s a statement we don’t want to make. - Ryan Evans - Editor