Airport investor rides tourism boom

By CHRIS DANIELS

New Zealand's tourism boom is helping Infratil at home, but a curious downturn in the Scottish freight market is still causing concern.

The listed investment company, which owns two-thirds of Wellington Airport and all of Glasgow's Prestwick airport, yesterday said there had been strong growth in international passenger volumes from the capital since December.

Figures for the months from March to June are records for the airport, and June's were 33 per cent higher than the year before. This is due to Air NZ's new, low-cost Tasman Express service and Pacific Blue's flights to Australia starting from March.

New Zealand domestic passenger numbers are also good, increasing 12 per cent for the month.

Infratil's investment in Prestwick Airport is going to plan, but with a drop-off in freight volumes, first noticed in March when a profit downgrade of 10 per cent was issued for the airport investment.

Freight volumes were down by 26 per cent for June, and fell 21 per cent over the whole quarter.

Low-cost airline Ryanair bases a lot of its flights out of Prestwick and passenger numbers rose 21 per cent last month.

Infratil is currently in the High Court at Auckland fighting the Air NZ-Qantas plan for an alliance. Such a deal, if approved by competition regulators, would cut the number of competing international airlines at Wellington Airport from three to two.