New $1.3bn runway idle as airports stall

Thursday will see construction of Brisbane’s second runway completed but it will see little use in the months ahead.

Brisbane Airport’s new runway, still under construction late last year.

For Brisbane Airport, the timing of Scott Morrison’s comments that it would be a long time before international travel restrictions were eased, was crushing.

Thursday will see construction of Brisbane’s second runway completed, after eight years of work complicated by swampy con­ditions on which it was built.

Costing $1.3bn, the parallel runway will double capacity at the airport to 50 million passengers a year, and more than 450,000 aircraft movements.

Instead of easing pressure on the existing runway as intended, the second landing strip will get­ ­little use in the months ahead because of the dramatic drop off in traffic. This April, 11,000 international travellers passed through Brisbane Airport compared with 462,000 last April.

Brisbane Airport Corporation chief executive Gert-Jan de Graaff said while he understood the government’s caution over reopening borders to international arrivals, the restrictions would be felt deeply beyond the aviation industry for a very long time: “International services are incredibly important, not just for airports and airlines but for tourism, business, freight and trade across the nation.”

Sydney Airport chief Geoff Culbert agreed he would like to see international travel restored “as soon as it was safe to do so” after experiencing a 96 per cent fall in passengers this month.

He said airports were having constructive discussions with the government and “thinking about things like common international standards for pre and post-travel screening so we’re ready to go when the time comes”.

“One of the best ways our industry can contribute to the economic recovery is to minimise the downtime between restrictions easing and actually getting passengers up in the air again,” Mr Culbert said. “There’s definitely merit in using New Zealand travel as an international test case.”

Melbourne Airport executive Jai McDermott said aviation was the first industry to suffer from the COVID-19 restrictions, with traffic through Tullamarine down 97 per cent heading into April. He said they were expecting inter­national travel to be one of the last restrictions to be eased.

Adelaide Airport has not welcomed a regular passenger flight from overseas for more than a month and managing director Mark Young said they were not expecting any for an extended ­period. “As suggested by the Prime Minister, at the right time we think it is sensible to explore trans-­Tasman flights as an earlier priority,” he said.

Qantas was also keen to re-­establish services to New Zealand, which before COVID-19 was Australia’s second biggest source of tourists and business travellers after China. “Reopening commercial flights across the Tasman would be a welcome step in the recovery of the tourism industry,” a spokesman said.

Australian Airports Association acting chief executive Simon Bourke said their priority was to get people flying again as soon as it was safe to do so to help airports remain ­viable. He said it was critical domestic flights resumed as soon as it was responsible to do so, in the hope d trans-Tasman routes would follow. “It’s critical we get the return to operations right and a slow start to international services will be better than a false start.”