Sunshine Coast airport master plan set for release
Wed 03 May 2006
Amy Taylor, Journalism
Maroochy Shire Council will release a copy of the anticipated airport master plan later this month in response to an increase in passenger numbers passing through the Sunshine Coast Airport.
Maroochy Shire Councillor Tony Northey said the master plan would address issues such as parking, the current runway and how it could be extended and a timeframe for the east-west runway.
“The airport master plan was supposed to go to us on Wednesday [April 26, 2006] but the new airport manager is reviewing it for modifications,” Cr Northey said.
The delay is not expected to create any major issues in airport operations.
Owned by Maroochy Shire Council, the airport recently celebrated Jetstar’s launch of direct services to Adelaide, a move Maroochy Shire Mayor Joe Natoli described as an exciting step in aviation development.
The new direct services however, are sure to bring even more passengers through the airport, which is designed to cater for about 850,000 passengers a year.
The issue of traffic congestion in and around the access road will also be addressed as a result of the increase in tourists to the area.
“I put money aside two years ago to get traffic lights put in at the airport access road,” Cr Northey said.
“Hopefully they’ll be put in soon - we’ve been waiting on news about the Pacific Paradise bypass and now that Main Roads have that sorted, we can get the lights in. I’m not sure exactly how long it will take but we’ll have one set of lights at the airport entrance and another set at the bypass – the lights will be synchronised.
“Parking is another thing we’re thinking of looking at. People are going in and parking for four to five days at a time for free. So we’re looking at introducing paid parking.”
Cr Natoli said the airport had grown significantly since 2001 when around 200,000 passengers utilised the services on offer.
“The past two years has also seen significant growth with more than 750,000 passengers using the airport in the 2005 calendar year,” he said.
“That is a growth of approximately 48 per cent during that timeframe.”
Cr Northey said the airport expected to hit the magic milestone of one million passengers within the next 12 to 24 months.
“With the way the airport is set out now, it’s not equipped to deal with the increase in passengers,” he said.
“The layout of the terminal is such that we can do some changes to get it capable of handling up to 3 million passengers [a year]… changes to things such as how we do operations, maybe introducing more security checkpoints, that sort of thing.”
Airport café worker Kerryn Hill said the increase in passengers was definitely noticeable.
“Four years ago when I started there was probably seven staff working here. Now there’s 25 of us,” she said.
“We were getting through four or five jets a day when I started and now we’re getting eight to 10 jets a day.
“The parking definitely doesn’t coincide with the amount of people… and they had to put a new left hand lane in on the airport access road because people were lining up down to the terminal trying to get out.”
Ms Hill said changes to increase the capacity of the airport would definitely be welcomed.
The airport manager was not available for comment.
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Submitted Comments
It's interesting that there's so little mainstream press on this subject, as it is something that affects all of us, especially traffic-wise. Good flow in the story and very informative direct quotes -- well done.
Diana Cholewska