Wellington airport

What is it about airports and prestige? I get that large cities such as London and New York have prestigious airports, but they started with the city and then built an airport to match. (LA is a sprawl, and has an airport to match.) Politicians seem to consistently get it backward, and believe if they just build a large airport then the city will follow. Perhaps they've watched "Field of Dreams" one too many times, but it makes no sense to me.

Case in point, Wellington airport wants to expand. They currently have plenty of capacity (i.e. can handle more airplanes) and the runway is long enough to accommodate most,jets, but they can't handle long-haul flights because a jet with a full tank takes a lot longer to take off than the same plane with a small amount of fuel.  That's why international flights out of Wellington only go to Australia or Fiji.

(Currently, the longest flight is from Auckland to Dubai, at 14,000km and just over 17 hours.)

Unfortunately, in the 1950s they'd built the runway on some swampland on an isthmus so there is no way to lengthen it except by reclaiming the sea.  They even put together a cute video (albeit 5 minutes long) on how they're going to do that.  And the price tag for extending the runway 100 meters (about one football field)?  Well, as they put it, only US $2 million per meter!



Now, while that's peanuts compared to the estimated US $2.6 billion (with a b) cost of the new LA Rams football field, it's still a hefty pricetag, and the private owners of the airport want taxpayers to foot half of the bill.  In fact, taxpayers have already paid nearly US $2 million just to apply for consent from the government -- do you see the circular logic here?  The government is paying to get approval from the government.  So what do the taxpayers get for their money?  Well, by all accounts, nothing.

Air New Zealand, the nation's flag carrier, who should be advocating for better facilities, said, "Long-haul flights out of Wellington are a pipe dream" and "no airline could make money out of it."  That's pretty damning words from a major partner who stands to gain no benefit by not extending the runway.  Qantas, the other major airline that services Wellington, also said "if the extension went ahead the airline was not interested in utilising Wellington as a hub for anything other than domestic and trans-Tasman flights."  Double-ouch.

But wait, the supporters cry (including Wellington mayor Celia Wade-Brown), it doesn't make sense for Air NZ (whose hub is in Auckland) and Australia's Qantas to operate long-haul flights from Wellington.  Instead, they point to some as-yet-unnamed airline to use the long-haul flights to service their hub in some as-yet-unnamed Asian country.  That is, they not only want to build the extension over the objections of their two major partners (who account for 6 out of the 9 daily international flights) but they're doing so based on a pipe-dream of finding another major partner.

But wait, they carry on (without listening to anyone trying to reason with them): Singapore Airlines just announced a direct flight from Wellington to Singapore with a stop in Brisbane to refuel!  That proves there is demand for long-haul services from Wellington to Asia!  Well, yes, except it doesn't. Singapore Airlines has specifically refused to commit to long-haul flights from Wellington, and the economics of a flight from Wellington to Brisbane to Singapore is a lot different than a Wellington-Singapore non-stop!

So there you have it, another attempt to "jump start" the process and, rather than focus on making Wellington a great city, the focus is on doing other things great cities do.  Of course I could be completely wrong and in ten years, when I can fly non-stop from Wellington to a host of Asian countries at hyper-competitive rates, I may be eating my words.  But as a newly-minted Kiwi taxpayer, my immediate concern is on the government proposal to give NZ $150 million to a private operator to build an airport that nobody wants.

Then again, this is the same government that just spent $26 million on a referendum to change the flag that nobody wanted.  The next general election is in 2017.  Unfortunately, I won't have the right to vote until 2018.