Sydney Airport chief’s plans to make it the most efficient and stave off competition

Four days into the job as Sydney Airport chief, Scott Charlton has revealed big plans such as $250,000 a month to the fastest baggage handlers and $2m on overdue upgrades.

Scott Charlton has taken over at Sydney Airport after a highly regarded career steering Transurban. Picture: Valeriu Campan

On the cusp of what’s expected to be Sydney Airport’s busiest passenger period in four years, new chief executive Scott Charlton has unveiled the first of a series of new plans aimed at ensuring his airport is the one airlines want to transit through.

Sydney Airport will pay a $250,000 per month bonus scheme throughout the holiday period to the fastest baggage handling companies at its T1 international terminal.

The unusual step applies to workers who deliver the bags to the carousels and who are employed via outsourcing arrangements by the airlines.

“Even though it’s not our responsibility we’re trying to incentivise those baggage handlers to get those transfer bags out quicker,” Mr Charlton said.

“It’s in our interest to have a better customer experience because more airlines will want to have transfers here at the airport, so while it’s great for the customers it’s also great for the airport.”

He would not be drawn on whether the airlines were doing enough themselves to encourage fast work from the baggage handlers they contract out to.

Mr Charlton is just four days into running the nation’s biggest airport, having been for 11 years the highly regarded chief executive of Transurban, the country’s biggest toll road operator.

Sydney Airport’s shopping and duty free precinct.

He said the airport would also spend $2m a day on upgrading baggage and security services, its main car park that is currently condemned and freight services.

Qantas was this year found to have illegally fired its 1700 baggage handlers. During the height of Covid-19 it had months of record misplaced bags after sacking its ground handlers and even had to resort to putting executives on the tarmac to try to resolve the lost luggage.

“That’s up to the airlines on how they work through that, but we know during this really busy time we’d really like to improve our product,” Mr Charlton said.

“We do things all the time to incentivise airlines to come here.”

Given Sydney currently only has one international airport, the Texas-born CEO pointed out airlines could easily choose others airports such as Brisbane or Melbourne to transfer through if Sydney was substandard.

“I think Sydney is very special, I’ve lived here for 30 years … but we’re not special in the non-competition sense. We know that we have to compete for our product and our customers,” Mr Charlton said.

The airport has a goal of limiting passenger wait time to no more than 10 minutes at a baggage carousel and bringing down connection times for transferring passengers between international and domestic terminals to 60 minutes.

Sydney Airport is busy but has room to improve, says Scott Charlton.

Mr Charlton said Sydney Airport had gone through a difficult period over the past five years

but had rebuilt its workforce ready to take on the holiday period.

The airport expected 500,000 additional customers this Christmas holiday period compared with last year, taking the total numbers to 2.6 million during those three weeks. That forecast included 1.5 million domestic and 1.1 million international passengers.

Mr Charlton, 59, said Sydney Airport was as ready as it could be.

“I feel like we’ve done as much preparation as we could as the workforce has been rebuilt,” he said.

He pointed to recent screenings at the airport showing 95 per cent of people were clearing the domestic terminal in less than five minutes and the figure was 90 per cent through international.

“So there will be longer queues and there will always be teething issues but, you know, we’re confident that we can handle the situation,” Mr Charlton said.

Originally published as Sydney Airport chief’s plans to make it the most efficient and stave off competition