Monday, December 05, 2011

Airport alliance to ease the strain

PLANS for a second airport in the Sydney basin could be further delayed after Sydney Airport made a pre-emptive strike by releasing plans for a $1 billion-plus overhaul aimed at creating two airline alliance based precincts.

Under the proposal, released yesterday, the airport will break the divide between the domestic and international terminals.

Qantas, Jetstar and the group's alliance partners, such as British Airways, will relocate under the one roof at what are now the domestic terminals T2 and T3. Virgin Australia would shift all of its operations from T2 to the international terminal.

The planned overhaul means that, by 2019, most passengers will no longer have to transfer between international and domestic terminals.

The plans were hailed by tourism groups as a victory for commonsense by making Sydney more appealing to passengers.

The changes would also help boost capacity throughout the day and reduce costs such as towing aircraft across taxiways to other parts of the airport.

The release of its long-term vision comes as debate over a second airport is set to be renewed by the release of a federal-government study into the options.

The study was to have been released this year, though might not be ready until next. But analysts said yesterday that Sydney Airport's plans would make it more difficult to mount a case for a second airport in the near term.

''If the major airlines are going to invest more money in Sydney Airport it will make it harder [to justify the need for a second airport in the basin],'' Legg Mason's senior research analyst, Andrew Chambers, said.

Another analyst said it ''aids the argument to say that a second Sydney airport doesn't need to be established for another five or seven years and probably better aligns the airlines to lobby in the same direction''.

Sydney Airport's chief executive, Kerrie Mather, declined to say whether it made the case for a second airport less likely. It was a matter for the federal government, she said, and emphasised that ''we have a first right in relation to any second airport''.

''This is about making the most out of what we have. We still have 40 per cent of our slots unused and what this does is provide more gates and parking than under our original master plan. It is about providing more capacity and releasing it earlier.''

But the Board of Airline Representatives, which lobbies on behalf of international airlines, said Sydney Airport's long-term plans would not diminish the need for a second airport in the medium term as constraints on the established site mounted. ''Something has to be done over the next decade to ensure that a site [for a second airport] is available,'' the group's executive director, Warren Bennett, said.

Under the latest plan, the airport has guaranteed that airlines such as Tiger Airways and Regional Express have ''ongoing access'' but has yet to decide what terminal they would use. The plan includes the construction of a new engineering complex for Qantas, as well as a new hangar for maintenance on Virgin's aircraft.

In an interview with the Herald last week, the Director-General of Transport for NSW, Les Wielinga, who is on the reference group for the federal study, said there were several ways to allow more planes to fly in and out of Sydney. ''Do I think that additional capacity is needed to service Sydney? Yes I do,'' Mr Wielinga said. ''But there are a number of models that might be able to achieve that.''

Asked if this meant allowing more planes to fly through the existing airport, Mr Wielinga said: ''That's one possibility, yes. I think this needs to be looked at, the outcome of this is fairly controversial, airports do have large impacts on communities.''

The plan will also mean that passengers arriving at the new Virgin terminal will have to travel marginally further to the city. The international terminal is about three kilometres further from the city than the domestic terminal.

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