Fields of Gold?

Wellcamp sits just 15km from Toowoomba’s CBD. It is the family’s own property that they intend turning into a private airfield with which they hope to attract corporate, charter and domestic services as well as international freight operations.

For its creators, Wellcamp is more than a pipe-dream. Earth-moving equipment has already started carving out the future shape of the airport, which it’s claimed will include a 747-capable 2,800m runway bordered by commercial developments including a light industrial complex, retail and hotel accommodation. In every respect the Wagners are replicating all the ingredients major airports depend on to successfully – and sustainably – generate revenues.

At first sight, the concept appears to have merit. As has been reported in Australian Aviation, Brisbane Airport, even with progressive improvements to capacity, is coming under increasing pressure to implement a curfew, with federal MP Kevin Rudd said to be lobbying discreetly but solidly for a curtailment in round-the-clock operations. Unsurprisingly, he lives in a noise-affected constituency.

Gold Coast, meanwhile, has already succumbed to a curfew as a one of the most noise-sensitive airports in Australia. Its ability, therefore, to take overflow from Brisbane or indeed to be able to attract substantially more business is limited, and any additional traffic it does generate would be to support the region’s successful tourism sector rather than the resources industry and freight.

Toowoomba, with its single 1,341m runway, is capable of accommodating up to Dash 8-size aircraft. As a result, it handles a modest 13,000 passengers a year.

Further afield, while the Sunshine Coast council continues to be highly proactive in its ambitions to attract more business, it, like the Gold Coast, will be more likely to focus on tourism-based traffic and build on its very successful aviation training and aircraft sales portfolio.

The niche being carved out of by the Wagners is, as it currently stands, is a spark of brilliance in an otherwise dully risk-averse aviation sector at the moment.

With the project’s $100 million cost being personally financed, there needs to be a lot of conviction the project will fly.

Staged development

The plans submitted and approved by the council in December cover a 516ha site that was changed from rural zoning to allow a 24-hour public airport. The runway will be configured in a north-west to south-easterly direction, 2,897m long and 45m wide, joined to a 194sqm terminal and aprons by two taxiways.

Importantly, the development is staged so in its initial stages the airport will be a modest operation capable of accommodating up to 50-seat regional aircraft. It will also handle private and charter fixed-wing and helicopter operations, predominantly in support of mining operations in the Surat Basin. The initial plan does not include hangarage, fuel storage or any of the commercial development.

In its next iteration, and not part of the initial development application, the airport would offer expanded terminal facilities for aircraft up to 76 seats on scheduled services to Sydney, which would trigger security screening. FIFO services would be expanded to the Bowen and Galilee Basins, which combined with scheduled services would see annual passenger throughput at 135,000 by the end of 2015 and 165,000 by the end of 2016.

Stage 2 as outlined in the plan and which takes the blistering pace of growth out to only the end of 2018, incorporates the construction of hangars, another apron, air traffic services facilities and capacity for 170-seat aircraft for jet services to Sydney and further afield, with freighter services to Asia. Annual throughput is projected at 238,000.

Thereafter, the Wagners hope to attract maintenance providers to the site, helping to create an aerospace park-type concept emulating those in Brisbane and Melbourne.

It is at this time the current lease on Toowoomba Airport concludes, raising hopes of the realisation of the site’s future land value back to the council. At the end of its first 20 years in operation, the masterplan shows annual passenger traffic standing at 530,000.

The airspace obstacle

But as with any major aviation development, it takes more than inspiration and earth-moving equipment.

Along with the multitude of regulatory authorities that will have to be satisfied the airport meets statutory and aviation compliance standards, the Wagners will need to convince the Department of Defence the development’s proximity to blocks of airspace and corridors that are vitally important to aviation training will not represent a threat to military flying operations.

Defence doesn’t want the development to proceed. That is resoundingly clear.

A letter from Defence to the council late last year clearly set out the reasoning.

“As soon as an aircraft departs or lands at the proposed airport, it will be within Defence’s restricted military airspace,” Air Commodore Anker Brodersen said.

“An airport in the proposed location has serious safety implications. Of note, the long-term viability of the proposed airfield will be reliant upon access to restricted military airspace that cannot be guaranteed.

“Due to Defence’s operational requirements, access to active restricted military airspace can only be granted on a case-by-case basis.
“Consequently, Defence recommends an airport of this nature be located further afield, where airspace is available.”

“As soon as an aircraft departs or lands at the proposed airport, it will be within Defence’s restricted military airspace.”

Although Defence is typically strongly averse to civil movements in and around its bases and airspace, on this occasion the potential for impacts on its Oakey Army Aviation Training Centre, Amberley and associated danger and restricted airspace stand to be appreciable.

While the Wagner’s bulldozers plough the runway, the Wellcamp airport site only has land-use approval that does not automatically guarantee aircraft will fly – or be permitted to fly. While the aerodrome requirements are well prescribed in annexes and policies, the use of restricted and adjoining airspace will more than likely represent the greatest impediment to the project.

As Australian Aviation columnist Doug Macdonald described it: “While it’s refreshing to see someone building a major airport in under a year compared to the endlessly bogged down second Sydney Airport and Brisbane’s painful parallel runway machinations, much remains to be sorted out before the project can be fairly evaluated.

“However, what is clear is that you simply can’t put scheduled jets or even turboprops through the known Danger Area that overlays and surrounds Wellcamp. That Danger Area accommodates low and fast flying by F/A-18s, and adjoins other Restricted Areas that lie to the west of Amberley,” he said. On navigation charts for the area, warnings state “High speed low level military jets operating random routes”.

Macdonald explained that Danger Areas are ‘see and avoid’ but Restricted Areas require clearance, “something that may not always be available”.

“What the regulators might think of unseparated scheduled services – especially jets – and F/A-18s (and in the future F-35s) is unknown.

“Then there is the timeframe. Building a major airport in two years – and doing it safely in a joined-up way with all the agencies that need to be involved – let alone construction – is going to be a significant challenge.”

One does have to ask whether the investment of such physical and financial resources the Wagners are throwing at this project, without having first established whether the airport could operate in harmony with long-established military and civil airspace restrictions, was reasonably judged.

In response, John Wagner was reported in the Toowoomba Chronicle as saying: “We put men on the moon in the early 1970s, so I can’t see any reason why we can’t re-design airspace in 2013. That’s how I view it. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

The bigger airspace dilemma

However, some will is being shown, but it is largely within the civilian ranks that solutions are being sought. Airservices and CASA – two key agencies that will need to be intimately involved with the development and its ultimate operational approval – are working on potential changes to airspace corridors that would safely mesh with adjacent military airspace.

But what started as a study to support the operation of a single new airfield has opened up the myriad of complex airspace issues that beset south-east Queensland’s air traffic management environment.

“So significant appear the conflicting demands of airspace users in south-east Queensland, with some of that airspace architecture very dated, planning for a complete re-organisation of the region’s airspace is imminent,” Macdonald said.

Whatever the solutions, they are unlikely to materialise in a long-term form in time for the Wagners’ airport to open even in its first-stage form.

Airspace redesign, because of the acute interdependencies that come together to create a harmonious and safe operating environment, is a time-consuming process that even when designed must run the gauntlet of regulatory approvals under international and Australian rules. Even modest changes can take more than two years from design drafting to approved flying.

If the Wagners are to realise their ambitions to be open within their desired 18-month timeframe, limitations on the airfield will be acute, not just as a result of any impediments Defence may put in the way of flying operations at Wellcamp, but because of the intrinsic limitations the complex south-east Queensland airspace block creates.

How or whether this ambitious project works, the developers’ spirit that is guiding the development is wholly commendable. What remains to be seen however, is whether that optimistic sentiment will be tangibly shared by other users of the airspace that surrounds the Wellcamp site.