Eyes on Whenuapai for second city airport

By WAYNE THOMPSON

Massey University's aviation department says the Air Force's planned withdrawal from Whenuapai airbase is a cue to establish a world-class aviation training centre there.

The department's head, Professor Graham Hunt, said yesterday that the base would be ideal for use as the city's secondary commercial airport and for aeronautical studies.

Massey was interested in teaching aeronautical engineering, aircraft maintenance and pilot training at the base.

"It would be a tragedy if Whenuapai was turned into a housing estate or an industrial park," Professor Hunt said.

Massey has 400 fulltime-equivalent aviation students and its flying programme is spread over airfields at Palmerston North and Ardmore in South Auckland.

The university's call comes as the Defence Ministry prepares to dispose of the 280ha base in rural West Auckland.

The Government announced last week it was consolidating operations at Ohakea Airbase in the Manawatu within the next five years.

The Waitakere City Council has voted to support the base being retained for joint military and civilian aviation use to strengthen the civil emergency capability in the region.

Waitakere Mayor Bob Harvey has also formed a taskforce to guide council lobbying for the most valuable use of the base to make up the $60 million a year it puts into the local economy.

Taskforce chairman Bryan Mogridge would not be drawn on possible uses yesterday.

But National MP John Key, whose Helensville electorate includes Whenuapai, said as much as he wanted the base retained, he struggled to see how it could succeed as a commercial airport.

Emotional and parochial reasons for having an airport did not stack up against the realities of airport economics.

About $300 million would need to be invested in Whenuapai to bring it up to standard, including a longer and stronger runway for Boeing 747 and 767s, and other amenities.

The airport would have to attract airlines to use it - against competition from an expanded and improved Auckland International Airport.

"Who will fund a $300 million white elephant?"ked Mr Key.

"It surely means ratepayers have to pick up the bills."

Freight industry executives discounted suggestions that Whenuapai had prospects as an export air freight centre.



Gavin Satchell, of Fliway International, said freight forwarders would be unlikely to move their substantial investments from Mangere to Whenuapai.

He saw its potential mostly as a domestic freight hub using passenger planes to the rest of the country.

But Lloyd Morrison, chairman of Morrison & Co, which manages Infratil's interests in the Wellington and Glasgow Prestwick airports said the airport idea had potential.

There were easily enough people in the Auckland region to sustain two airports, he said.

Wellington had 450,000 people and yet had 4 million passengers a year going through its airport.



But Hamilton Airport chief executive Hugh McCarroll said it was more logical to consider Hamilton as the second airport for Auckland and the upper North Island.

Hamilton was going through town planning processes with a view to extending its runway in 2004. It was already catering for 11 transtasman flights a week by Freedom Air.

The chief executive of Auckland Airport, John Goulter, said it would be at least 2050 before the airport needed a hand to meet demand.

Herald feature: Defence