The Future of Sydney Airport

History of Redevelopment

Sydney Airport was first licensed as an airport in 1920. It was merely a162 hectare cow paddock until an additional 66 hectares were added the following year. The first hangar was built in 1923 and a year later the first regular air service began to Melbourne and Adelaide. The relative luxury of gravel runways came in 1932 and Qantas began services from Mascot just two years later. Sealed runways had to wait until World War II when the longest runway was 1,800 metres.

The site was completely redeveloped after the war by diverting the Cook’s River and undertaking major landfill works. A control tower and international terminal were commenced. Runways were realigned to give the layout we recognise today. Old photographs of the airport show the change was dramatic.

The introduction of the jet age in the early sixties quickly made the new airport inadequate, so in the mid1960s the north/south runway (16/34) was extended into the Bay to a length of 2,529 metres. However, the 7 4 7 came on the scene before the runway was complete which meant the extension had to be continued out into the Bay. By 1972, Sydney Airport had 3,962 metres of north/south runway which could cater for maximum payloads out of Sydney under any conditions.

Big Business

Today Sydney Airport processes over 13 million passengers each year, comprising 34% of Australia’s domestic passengers and 53% of Australia’s international passengers. It takes 207,000 aircraft movements to achieve that feat and the growth trend is up by 3% each year. Over 160,000 tonnes of freight are shifted each year with a healthy balance of this tonnage in Australia’s favour.

The Federal Airports Corporation (FAG) revenue from Sydney Airport exceeded $100 million in 1988/89, yielding an operating profit of $38 million. Yet the irony is that over 60% of income comes from landside businesses.

Managing Sydney airport is like running a Westfield Shoppingtown with its own runway. Over14,000 people are directly employed on the site in120 organisations whilst another 5,000 owe a sizeable proportion of the employment to the existence of KSA. Over 50% of these people live within 10 km of the airport and we imagine are not overly perturbed by the noise! Sydney Airport is also the home base of an international airline ranking sixth largest in the world in terms of passenger kilometres flown.

Making the Most of the Site

In 1930 the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Public Works looked at airport development in Sydney and concluded that “it would be preferable to develop Mascot to its full capacity before considering the acquisition of any area at a greater distance from Sydney. ” This conclusion remains valid today.

The massive leap in aircraft size since the last redevelopment, however, has caused many of the design problems now being experienced at Sydney Airport. Combined with the rapid growth in business and tourist traffic, the present facility must again be transformed if it is to overcome its problems.

Passenger preferences and the Qantas base dictate that Sydney remains the main international gateway into Australia. Annual international passenger growth will be around 7% until 1995. Meanwhile, domestic passenger growth is forecast to be only 3% even with deregulation. Commuter numbers are steady but their future is threatened by possible Federal Government moves to severely limit their access during peak hours. Because the current limitation at Sydney Airport is runway capacity, the proposed parallel runway is intended to increase the handling rate of the airport by at least one third. Under favourable conditions the parallel runway would almost double peak handling rates. For these levels of activity, Sydney Airport does not have the necessary gates, standing areas, check-ins, baggage handling facilities, parking or other ground facilities. The existing air traffic control system would also be swamped. Without further development of all these interlocking requirements, the runway investment will be underutilised.

The job of the FAG is to ensure that facilities are available to meet the demand. However,the task is not simply to increase the runway capacity of the airport. Sydney Airport has constraints both on runway capacity and terminal capacity. As the airpor t is further developed, every airside development needs to be matched by complementary landside changes. One weak link cannot jeopardise the total airport capacity – or the potential revenue.

So, after more than sixty years as a major airport, it has taken the current crisis and the advent of the FAG to finally develop a Planning Strategy for the facility.

Landside

The fundamental limitation of Sydney Airport is the available land area. For comparison, Tullamarine is four times its size while Dallas Fort Worth, the newest airport in North America, could swallow Sydney Airport twelve times over.

Adjacent land for expansion is not available, except for offsite parking. Even filling between the parallel runways would be expensive and of little use because of obstacle height limits.

At present the airport can only accommodate two 747 freighters at the cargo terminal at one time. This is desperately inadequate although new freight aprons are being squeezed into the constricted land area. Sydney moves the vast bulk of Australia’s international airfreight, but there is room for increased efficiency. For comparison, Los Angeles shifts nearly four times the cargo that Sydney does in just over twice the space. The FAG and other users alike would appreciate the revenue benefits of increasing the cargo capacity of the airport.

Several options have been analysed in the Planning Strategy so that the land limitations do not negate the advantage of the parallel runway. Without the parallel runway the airport will be near saturation within five years. Building parallel runway grants a further decade until the land area limits the use of available runway capacity.

Like in the 1950s, the most radical plan proves to be the best. The Government has dictated that after the parallel runway is built the east/west (07/25) runway would •only be used when operationally necessary. By going one step further and restricting all large aircraft operations to the parallel north/south runways, buildings and apron space can encroach closer to the cross runway. Sydney is fortunate because the prevailing winds dictate the use of the east/west runway during only one half of one percent of the year. By comparison, the existing curfew covers over 20% of the year! By working around the weather, the passenger and freight terminal areas can be greatly expanded. This scheme balances airside and landside supply to meet demand until at least 2010.

No development would occur, however, until airlines agreed to limit the use of runway 07/25 to narrow body visual operations only. Once the parallel runways proved themselves operationally, the cross runway could even be reduced to a stub runway of 1,200m for VFR commuter aircraft only. Introducing a stub runway releases a vital parcel of land. The international terminal could then expand across the western end of the present cross runway towards the control tower, more than doubling the amount of area presently available.

The stub runway would be suitable for Group 2 aircraft such as the DHC-6, Chieftain, Jetstream, etc in all weathers. Group 3 aircraft such as the Fokker 50, DHC-8, Shorts 360, etc could be accommodated in dry weather. This means that all the existing intrastate and regional propeller aircraft would be able to approach and depart independently of the parallel runways. The intrastate sector presently accounts for 16% of movements.

In the meantime, the international terminal has emerged from a $48m refurbishment program which transformed a sleepy 707 facility into a workable terminal suitable for the 7 47-400. Work is already underway on the next phase; it is now being extended by 48,000 square metres with six new aerobridges and two additional apron parking spots. The expanded international terminal will be operational by the end of1992 just in time to cater for the 5. 4 million passengers expected the following year.

The domestic terminals are also being improved. New aprons and taxiways will accommodate the expansion of existing Ansett and Australian terminals to meet the needs of deregulation.

Because an airport is only a waypoint in a journey, people also judge a facility by its ground access. Sydney Airport is extremely well located just 8km from the city centre. However, the central location of the airport diverts the main road freight and traffic flows around the outside of the site. Therefore, ground access to the airport needs to be radically improved by both the Federal and State Governments.

A new urban freeway will link into the north-western side of the airport within the decade. A new road along the western edge of the airport will complete a beltway route right around the airport perimeter but is conditional on the closure of the western stub of runway 07/25.

There are various proposals for a rail link from the city centre. Qantas is particularly keen for a connection because it would assist its large number of shift employees to get to work. However, the economics of the rail idea suggests it may be some years in coming.

Airside

The airside improvements at Sydney Airport are intended to reduce average delays which now approach four minutes for each aircraft movement. On the surface, the simplest way is to prohibit or discourage certain classes of aircraft from using Sydney Airport. Because the airlines need to retain their feeder services at the same terminal this is unlikely.

Something will have to be done – near saturation will occur in 1995 when current plans have the facility processing 17. 5m passengers annually. Delays will become ridiculous for some flights. Already procedures are in place to keep most of the period _ of delay on the ground. This saves fuel and reduces the potential

for airborne traffic conflicts. However, it is a nightmare to administer and artificially caps the capacity of the facility; opportunities to interleave aircraft into the traffic sequence are wasted.

There is no doubt that a parallel runway will dramatically increase the capacity and reduce delays at the airport. The parallel runway is in fact no more radical than the realigment and extension of the runways in the days before environmental consciousness.

Note that the parallel runway is still only a good idea. The Environmental Impact Statement has to be finalised and then the Federal Government will decide in December whether to proceed with construction. The industry will still have to do a lot of political fighting before a workable solution is guaranteed.

In the meantime, airways procedures are being developed to safely cater for all the aluminium until more concrete is available. The Civil Aviation Authority has commissioned two reports into capacity enhancement which should afford at least a 10% increase in hourly movements when implemented. Unhappily, not all the staff at Sydney Airport share the same goals. The industrial relations circumstances require delicate negotiations to introduce improved procedures and is the principal reason these improvements have not been instituted at time of writing.

A national flow control plan is also in the pipeline which may introduce some predictability into the operation of the airport. Airlines will be able to avoid the ripple effect throughout their networks of delays at Sydney Airport. However, they will have to cooperate by removing the overloads caused by flights being scheduled on the hour and half-hour.

Noise complaints are a feature of any airport and Sydney receives between 200 and 600 each year. The vast majority come from under the extended runway centrelines and seem to increase when the airport is in the news. Sydney Airport is fortunate to be adjacent to the ocean. Noise footprints show that most noise is thus spread over Botany Bay. However, that does not lessen the concerns of existing noise-affected residents or those likely to be within earshot of the parallel runway. The problem is that noise perception is subjective. For example, a1986 survey of noise by the Australian Environment Council showed that less than two-thirds of residents affected by airport noise said they actually heard the noise. Only 4% were highly annoyed. Surprisingly, 37% said they would prefer to get nd of barking dogs compared with 22% who would rather remove aircraft noise. The operation of the parallel runway will alter the pattern of noise impact. The Prime Minister’s April 1989 announcement _ of the runway decision stated that those severely affected by noise would decrease from 56,200 to 35,500. This is largely because the east/west runway would hardly be used. The eastern suburbs and the St. George area would literally escape from virtually all overflights.

The Realistic Future

In February 1986 the Federal Government announced that Sydney’s second airport would be on1,770 hectares at Badgery’s Creek, 46km south west of the city. By world standards, this is a small airport even though it will be around 2. 6 times the area of KSA and thus additional space may be required. To date, no more than land purchases have occurred at the site. Regardless of the parallel runway decision, construction of a general aviation facility will eventually proceed at Badgery’s Creek.

If the parallel runway proposal is abandoned, Badgery’s Creek airport would require at least two years of design work and four years of construction to become a domestic facility. It would cost around $390 million plus at least another $100 million for offsite infrastructure. An additional $50 million would allow for international flights in the same construction time. Badgery’s will also require a, massive investment in road/rail rapid transport infrastructure to link it with the CBD and other major Sydney urban centres. Where these hundreds of millions of dollars would come from has not yet been identified.

The critical issue is thus one of timing; to have a second airport before the market could support both facilities would spell financial disaster. There have been enough costly failures around the world to drive home the point. The only responsible course of action is to ensure that Sydney Airport is developed on the present site until Badgery’s Creek is capable of taking some of the overload.

Those opposed to the further development of Sydney Airport fail to realise that opening Badgery’s Creek airport will not prevent air traffic from increasing at KSA. Anti-runway groups compound their misconception when they refuse to acknowledge that the new runway and operating procedures at KSA can significantly reduce noise exposure.

Australia simply cannot afford ‘white elephants’. The future plans for Sydney Airport sustain a balance of landside and airside capacity, added and paid for as needed. Further, they defer the huge upfront investment in Badgery’s Creek until the FAC can be certain of recovering its money. After all, the taxpayer no longer has to pay the costs of airport development; the FAC funds all capital expansion out of its business profits. A premature Badgery’s Creek airport would once again consume public funds without solving the problems at Sydney Airport.

Sydney Airport must be revitalised just as it had to be after the War. The Planning Strategy will relieve the crisis to the benefit of users and neighbours alike, not to mention the economic well-being of all Australians.