Editorial: Airport must hasten plans

AS the first and last place that visitors see, Hobart Airport sets the tone and delivers the last memory. It is vital that we get it right.

AS the primary gateway to our beautiful state, the Hobart Airport has a massive role to play in the success of our pitch to visitors — and therefore to the continuing strength of our tourism industry.

As the first and last place that visitors see, the airport sets the tone and delivers the last memory. It is vital that we get it right.

We understand that passenger projections have changed, and that the issues at the airport are like many of the others our state confronts at the moment: that we have been too successful in recent years, and our planning has therefore just been unable to keep up.

This has been the case with housing, with traffic, and with facilities in some of our most popular tourist destinations. It’s also been the case with our state’s main airport.

As we reported yesterday, the original 2015 master plan for the airport was based on an estimate that 2.7 million passengers would move through the terminal in 2020. This was expected to jump to 3.3 million by 2025 and 4.6 million a year by 2035.

But those estimates have changed, due to bullish projections for the state’s tourism boom. Now it is forecast that we will hit the three million passenger mark much earlier — and that means the master plan needed to be properly reviewed, and the plans for refurbishments put on hold.

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And that’s what new airport boss Sarah Renner has been doing since she started in the job late last year. So she is on the right path. But the problem is that in the meantime our airport needs serious work. The hardly-touched departures hall in particular is an embarrassment, and the plans for “an extension of the food and beverage area” before next summer is hardly going to fix it. And that’s all before even talking about one of the biggest sleeper issues out there: that there is almost no give in the number of aircraft parking spots and so if one plane is late the next has to wait on the tarmac with the passengers still on board. Not a great way to start your Tassie holiday!

That Premier Will Hodgman has intervened is significant. He has “raised with management and owners of the airport” that “with our tourism industry booming and our state’s reputation as a first-class destination continuing to grow, the Hobart Airport must keep pace”.

It’s not a glib statement. It suggests the frustration passengers are feeling about the sub-standard facilities at the airport are shared by the Government. Not only that, but the Premier is so concerned he has already spoken to both airport management and its owners.

With the on-pause terminal upgrade now likely to be much larger than previously planned, the next challenge is going to be to actually get the thing built. Ms Renner has now suggested the full new departure hall might not be completed until 2025. Work will not start until at least 2020.

And so what’s the key take-out? That passenger facilities at our capital city’s airport will not be finalised for up to another seven years. We are no aviation experts at the Mercury. But you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realise that timeline doesn’t sound like the best for our island.