Auckland Airport flying high

By CHRIS DANIELS

A 1950 article in Popular Mechanics magazine speculated on what our world would be like in AD 2000. Some of its predictions, such as personal helicopters and synthetic crockery that dissolves in hot water, are laughable. But others were more prophetic.

One such vision was the part that airports would play in the post-millennium society.

"The heart of the town is the airport," it said. "Surrounding it are business houses, factories and hotels. In concentric circles beyond these lie the residential districts."

This vision is becoming a reality, at varying speeds in New Zealand and the world, but most rapidly in Auckland.

This month is the 75th anniversary of the Mangere site's first use for aircraft, when the Auckland Aero Club leased land from a dairy farmer. It is also the last month in the job for John Goulter, chief executive of the airport company for 15 years.

The aero club wanted only a place to land and take off in the 1920s, but, particularly in the 1990s, Goulter and the management of Auckland International Airport have made the area much more than that.

In 1928, the aero club president said the site was perfect for the club's three Gipsy Moths, because it "has many advantages of vital importance for an aerodrome and training ground. It has good approaches, is well drained and is free from power lines, buildings and fogs."

Work began on turning the site into Auckland's main airport in 1960. It started operating in November 1965, when the first passenger jet flight, an Air New Zealand DC-8, left for Sydney at 9.15am.

A new international terminal was opened in 1977, when the number of passenger movements was nearing 20,000 a week.

Now, about 24,000 people come through the airport every day.

With thousands of passengers and improved access to international markets comes the inevitable parochial bickering and local interest lobbying that has been a feature of New Zealand airport planning since at least the late 1920s.

Small towns and provincial centres try to promote often hare-brained schemes for the "internationalisation" of local airfields.

Promoters of towns as small as Alexandra have pushed for construction of international airports on their doorsteps.

In the late 1960s, Auckland and Christchurch won the battle over which New Zealand airports would become "jumbo jet fields".

A meeting of 200 delegates was held in June 1967 in Feilding (yes, Feilding) to get a "jumbo jet field" in the southern half of the North Island, rather than Auckland.

"A consolidated front is seen as essential by southerners to counter political pressure by Auckland for developing Auckland International Airport to cope with jumbo jets," said the Herald at the time.

"It is believed that a jumbo jet airport sited in Wellington province would reduce internal transport costs from freezing works and other major primary products factories."

The provincial proponents of an international airport in the pastures of Manawatu are less visible today, but the problem of coping with bigger aircraft has resurfaced with the impending arrival of the next generation of passenger aircraft, the 650-seat Airbus A380 "superjumbos".

The A380 is due to enter service in 2006, and its makers hope it will transform the aviation world in the same way as Boeing's famous 747 jumbo jet did in the late 1960s.

In May 1966, the Herald published a story raising concerns about whether Auckland International Airport could cope with the new jumbo jet.

"Giant Plane May Mean More Delay", said the headline, followed by a report quoting Auckland Regional Authority chairman Hugh Lambie.

He told the authority's airport committee he was "very concerned to hear that a proposal to build a Boeing airliner capable of carrying 450 passengers had taken the Department of Civil Aviation by surprise".

Moving such a large number of passengers through the airport would mean troublesome delays, said Lambie.

In the nearly 40 years since Lambie expressed his fears, a lot has changed at the airport.

It is now more accessible by road and some canny property development by the now-privatised Auckland International Airport Ltd has led to a transformation.

Enterprising Manukau, the city's economic development agency, described this transformation last month, when it inducted John Goulter into its Manukau Business Hall of Fame.

Goulter, it said, had "made visiting Auckland Airport not just a place to board a flight; the airport is now a destination for other activities".

Under Goulter's guidance, the airport and its surrounding land have become a business and commercial centre.

New Zealand's largest company, the dairy giant Fonterra, has its head office there.

Acting chief executive Jay Waldvogel says there is no better place for a company with such an international reach. Fonterra workers constantly travel to and from Auckland, and visitors are always arriving, making its location ideal.

Many other companies are waiting in the wings, ready to move to Mangere.

Trans Tasman Properties chief operating officer Bruce Catley certainly hopes so. The company is developing a 35ha "Airpark" subdivision on land it bought for $12 million.

Catley says more and more businesses will move to be near the airport.

"If you look at what happens in other cities around the world - see Qantas, all its offices are out at the airport - you'd have to say why is Air New Zealand in downtown Auckland? Probably a lot of it is that's where people like to come to work," he says.

"We see that there's going to be continued industrial and commercial development out there, with a lot more people locating around the airport."

Industrial and commercial land in the traditional areas of Mt Wellington and East Tamaki was becoming more expensive, and large areas of cheap land could be found around the airport.

The development of State Highway 20 was another attractive feature of the airport location, said Catley. An eventual connection to the Southern and Northwestern Motorways would give good access to road and air transport.

Freight and logistics businesses will always be keen on being at the airport, Catley says, but tourism businesses and import/exporters are also making the move.

Light engineering and manufacturing businesses are also becoming interested in airport locations.

It doesn't need a Popular Mechanics oracle to predict the continuing growth of Auckland Airport as a location for business.

Few people want to live next to a noisy airport, but industry and commerce - often uncomfortable neighbours with houses in expanding residential suburbs - will be packing up and heading to the airport.

FLYING HIGH

* Since 1988 Auckland International Airport has had annual passenger growth of 17.3 per cent, and now processes 8.8 million passengers a year.

* In 1988, the airport had about 15 shops; it now has at least 95 and more than 200 businesses operating on the airport site.

* Its net profit has risen from $3.7 million to $71 million.

In that time there has been:

* A 90 per cent increase in passenger movements.

* A 160 per cent increase in aircraft movements.

* A 210 per cent revenue increase, from $65 million to $201 million.

* A 430 per cent increase in retail income, from $10.9 million to $57.8 million.

* A 240pc increase in shareholder funds.