Context
When Queenstown Airport Corp was hard-driving expansion of its air noise boundaries in Queenstown and its dual-airport growth model, FlightPlan2050 offered a new vision of Frankton without the airport. We called for a full and objective study of all the airport options.
QLDC full council meeting
June 27, 2019
Good afternoon, I am John Hilhorst, representing FlightPlan2050.
I wish to speak to QAC’s Statement of Intent.
Our concern is that the dual-airport plan has been a done deal for many years – well before any public consultation.
This strategy of “one company – two airports” was already in QAC’s Annual Report of 2017. Its land and lease purchases at Wanaka Airport were even earlier. And it has also been forcing the purchase of Lot 6 in Frankton for more than eight years.
In all that time, no work has been done by QAC or by the council to investigate the relocation of the airport. Simply not been researched or considered.
The dual-airport strategy makes no sense. It is a lazy default prompted by the operational limits to Queenstown Airport. Airports benefit from economies of scale, not by dilution. Similarly, all associated businesses would incur more costs through duplication. Their productivity and profitability are reduced.
FlightPlan2050 has offered our vision to reimagine Frankton without the airport.
Our research has found that relocating the airport would be profoundly better than the dual-airport strategy. Better for the district, better for QAC, and better for Climate Change.
We have shared this information with each of you and it is detailed on our FlightPlan2050 website. You have had the opportunity to read it before today.
This decision – whether to cap, relocate or have dual airports – will have an enormous effect on shaping our district forever. But we are currently charging, blindly, down a one-way street without even looking if we’re heading in the right direction.
You people, this council, are the ones in control. This decision is happening on your watch. You have the authority, by resolution, to direct QAC. We ask that you choose our path wisely.
For this, you will need more information that you don’t currently have.
In your action today we call on you to push pause for QAC and insist on inclusion in this Statement of Intent a commitment to a full and objective study of all the options, prior to any irreversible action on the dual-airport strategy.
Your opportunity to do this is today. The book of history lies open, and you here today hold the pen.
Thank you.