Breaking The Constraints

With a lack of ground at sea level across the city, both ends of the short runway drop swiftly into deep water: deeper than ten metres within 100m of both the north and south overrun areas.

Yet the growth of the “coolest little capital in the world” is inextricably linked with its airport.

The political, tech, arts, culture and filmmaking sectors fundamental toWellington’s (and New Zealand’s) economy rely on frequent travel, and are currently required to connect in either Auckland, Christchurch or Australian cities to travel further than the Tasman.

With 16 per cent international travel growth in April compared to a year earlier, and a similar number forecast for May as Australian Aviation goes to press, we sat down with Wellington Airport’s airline development manager Mike Vincent to discuss the prospects for WLG’s growth, much-mooted runway expansion and additional airline service.

International growth is already happening even before the runway is extended

“Wellington is basically New Zealand’s joint second largest airport, if you think about passenger numbers,” Vincent says. “Auckland is dominant with about 14 million passengers a year. Christchurch has about 5. 8 million, that sort of order, and Wellington has about 5. 4 million. If you look at Wellington’s international market, looking at the last eight or nine years it’s been growing quite strongly. It tends to grow quite lumpily because for an airline to dedicate an aircraft to Wellington, they have got to commit to doing four sectors a day. ” “What we are going to be seeing over the next 12 months is a large increase in passenger numbers around Jetstar,” Vincent explains.

The Qantas Group’s Jetstar lowcost carrier launched Wellington- Gold Coast flights thrice-weekly in December 2014, boosting services to four-weekly in early 2015.

Wellington-Melbourne flights followed, with an Airbus A320 operating a back-of-the-clock redeye that departs at 0045 and arrives at 0645.

It’s both smart utilisation for the LCC and an opportunity to pick

Peak time passenger capacity will increase by 250 to 1,500 per hour in 2021.

up some same-day connections and even business travellers from Melbourne, since schedules previously departed Melbourne in the 0900 hour except for a lone 1800 Air New Zealand departure on Sundays. Getting home ten hours earlier, even on a pretty unappealing red-eye flight, could well be an option for price-sensitive passengers.

Together, the two Jetstar flights (together with higher loading on most trans-Tasman flights as passengers choose to connect international-to-international over Australia rather than domestic-to-international with a change of terminal at Auckland) make up the lion’s part of the airport’s 16 per cent international growth in April and 15‑plus per cent projections for May.

Fiji Airways is also due to boost Wellington’s international numbers with a twice-weekly Nadi flight operated by a Boeing 737-800 starting June 25. The new FJ flight will also enable business class passengers to fly business all the way to the US on Fiji Airways’Airbus A330-200 aircraft without having to connect in Australia – Air New Zealand’s domestic connections from Auckland are economy-only.

Fiji Airways has long been the budget way to connect from LAX to larger cities in Australia and New Zealand, with a stop in tropical Nadi, but it has previously focused on larger markets that already had direct service. Wellington, where passengers always have to connect anyway, could well be the first of many smaller destinations where the Fijian carrier can leverage its network.

“I think the big benefit that Fiji is going to bring to us is that connectivity with the North American market,” Vincent says. “The airline was pretty adamant that it needed to connect well with Los Angeles services, so that’s what they’ve done. I think the transit time is around about two to three hours which puts it on par with going over Auckland, but you’re international all the way and business all the way, which you can’t do via Auckland. ” The new generation of Embraer E-Jet E2 (see March 2015 Australian Aviation) also provides a set of opportunities. “It’s interesting for the likes of Wellington, where it is about a high yielding passenger rather than volumes of passenger, most smaller jets make sense. If you think about something like Wellington-Canberra which has been talked about for quite a long time, you have the incumbent airlines that are flying Boeing 737‑800s or Airbus A320s, and you are looking at a minimum of 168 seats. Which means you’re probably talking about a frequency of two a week, which doesn’t really appeal to what would be quite a large business market,” Vincent explains.

“If you can fly four a week with an Embraer jet, then suddenly the proposition is a lot stronger. I think for those sort of markets, maybe for Adelaide as well, potentially it’s quite good. It is one of those things if the opportunity is strong enough they’ll make it happen,”Vincent continues. “There’s talk about Newcastle Airport and Maroochydore (Sunshine Coast) all wanting to have services to New Zealand and those will support those secondary airports. ” The result of all this growth is a terminal that needs – and is receiving – expansion. A NZ$58m, 6,000m2 expansion to the southern end of the domestic side of the airport will extend the main terminal frontage approximately 35m to the south. Peak time passenger capacity will increase by 250 to 1,500 per hour in 2021, with a doubling in the number of lavatories, a centralised screening point, and additional capacity in the south-west pier, currently home to Air New Zealand’s domestic jet services and some domestic turboprop flights.

Wellington’s confined runway is, however, a constraint on widebody growth

The current runway at WLG, 16/34, stretches 2,081m in total, including two displaced thresholds of 130mat the north end and 106m at the south end. dating back to 2009 when a 130m extension was built. The previous runway length dated back to 1972, when a 270m extension was built to enable Air New Zealand Douglas DC-8 trans-Tasman services.

Wellington’s runway length already mean the A320 used by Air New Zealand and Jetstar or the 737-800 used by Qantas’ Jetconnect subsidiary on the trans-Tasman, and soon Fiji Airways Nadi flights, face restrictions in takeoff weight – minimal for the A320 (which has a sea level takeoff distance at MTOW of 2,090m) but more significant for the 737-800 (which requires 2,400m at MTOW).

Of course, the missions required by the operators of these aircraft do not stretch either narrowbody to their range limits, with Melbourne just 1,402nm away and Nadi a short distance further at 1,417nm.

Yet the airport and the local council are proposing a runway extension of just over 200m, and are “in the process of seeking resource consent”, Vincent tells Australian Aviation. Resource consents are the environmental and planning approvals required under the New Zealand Resource Management Act.

The runway extension currently proposed would extend the maximum takeoff distance to 2,300m, with the maximum landing distance a slightly reduced 2,170m. Subject to the appropriate consents and no delays in construction, the airport is aiming for a 2020 opening date for the extension.

“When the runway extension costs a million dollars a metre, that’s roughly the cost to extend, we can’t suddenly become a 3,000 metre airport,” Vincent says. “We have to account for everything that we are extending. We are designing the extension for the likes of theAirbus A350 and the Boeing 787 to get to places like Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai. Los Angeles and Beijing might be a little too far, but then again it depends on the [time of] year, the market and how much freight we need to carry. We’ve had a lot of work done looking at the viability of the long-haul routes out of Wellington and that’s part of what’s going to go out to resource consent. ” By comparison, Christchurch’s primary runway (02/20) is 3,288m and its secondary runway (11/29) is 1,741m. Auckland’s runway (05R/23L) stretches 3,635m.

Wellington’s council is enthusiastically on board with the extension plans, and it forms part of its ‘Eight Big Ideas for Economic Growth’, the eight principal aims for infrastructure and development projects in the city. “The city is pretty passionate about the runway extension,” Vincent says. “There’s a lot of planned infrastructure improvements that don’t necessarily rely on the runway extension but if you do the runway extension and get the long hauls here then it certainly helps. ”

If you build it, will they come?

The airport does, however, appear to be staking several hundred million dollars on the idea that 787 operators from China and the US will choose Wellington’s operationally constrained runway rather than adding services to Auckland or Christchurch.

“Wellington is targeting smaller widebody aircraft around the 300- seat size (Boeing 787-8, Airbus A350-900) as the market has a strong business component which would value frequency. A daily service with a smaller widebody would be preferable to a four times a week large aircraft,” Vincent notes.

“We expected that the 787 ought to be able to operate off our existingrunway,” Vincent explains, “but the delivery of it wasn’t as good as what everyone was expecting. That’s why we are having to get a runway extension. ” The problem is, even the high thrust version of the 787-8 requires 2,600m fully laden – and Vincent acknowledges, “We don’t know of anyone operating the high thrust versions at the moment. ” However, as Vincent notes, “it’s not going to need to take off with a full payload out of Wellington if it’s going to somewhere like Singapore, because Singapore’s only 4,600nm from Wellington. So it doesn’t need to take off with a full payload.

At the end of the day, there will still be a payload restriction, but it probably will be a freight restriction.

So the aircraft will be able to land at Wellington with a full payload.

They’ll be able to carry at least a full passenger load to these places, but there probably will be a freight restriction. ” Airbus’s latest twinjet might provide a greater opportunity, Vincent says. “I think probably the A350 will be a slightly better aircraft for Wellington than the 787.

What’s tending to happen at the moment is that aircraft are getting larger and more fuel efficient. But also the engine thrusts are getting lower as well, as a result. When you put in a runway it is all about power to weight ratio. The 787 probably doesn’t have the same power to weight ratio as, let’s say, the A350 does. ” Neither Etihad nor Emirates, of course, operate the 787-8 Dreamliner that Wellington has been using for its primary business case. Only Etihad operates the stretched 787‑9, although it has previously shown a willingness to stop in south-east Asia en route to Australasia, most recently on its A330 Abu Dhabi-Singapore- Brisbane flight. With that flight now replaced by a 787-9, and larger widebodies operating Sydney and Melbourne flights, Etihad would have the opportunity to extend a fifth freedom tag flight to Wellington. Emirates, of course, has long extended its 777‑300ER and later A380 flights from Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane to Auckland, making that airport its largest A380 outstation in the world.

“Our current runway is too short for a Boeing 777-300ER to land with maximum landing weight, meaning that a Sydney turn is notpossible,” Vincent said. “With the runway extension landing with maximum landing weight will be possible and so fifth freedom Tasman services with the Boeing 777‑300ER will be technically possible. We are a code E-compliant airport now and have gates and airbridges which can take this size of aircraft. We are working with Boeing to get an estimate of the 77X performance. ” The airport wouldn’t comment directly on Australian Aviation’s questions about how the business case for fifth freedom flights might be affected as a result of any potential Australia-UAE open skies renegotiation.

Overall, the business case for freight carriage is strong on the inbound – land an aircraft at WLG with a full belly of cargo on widebody ULD containers rather than having to decant them into A320 or 737 holds in Australia or Auckland – but weaker for NZ exports on the outbound. And in the cold hard light of day there are few airlines that are looking to make that kind of performance tradeoff.

Wellington’s notorious winds are a further complicating factor.

Although there is no specific NZ CAA requirement, most operators conduct special pilot training forWellington approaches, especially with regard to the winds coming off the Miramar peninsula. While that may be sensible for an outfit like Jetconnect or Jetstar NZ, where a significant proportion of operations will be into WLG, the cost-benefit and operational efficiencies of doing so may not match up for China Southern or United Airlines.

The New Zealand Airline Pilots’ Association (NZALPA) has also raised questions about the functionality of the runway extension, particularly in the context of the current runway’s 90m RESA (Runway End Safety Area).

NZALPA is calling for the airport to extend the current 90m Civil Aviation Authority legal minimum to what the association’s technical director David Reynolds calls international best practice: either a 240m RESA or the installation of an Engineered Materials Arresting System (EMAS), essentially a system of crushable material at the end of a runway into which an aircraft would sink and stop during a runway excursion.

Wellington’s existing runway has seen a fair amount of widebody traffic in the past, including Qantas Boeing 747SP aircraft, purchased specifically for the Sydney- Wellington route. Yet with Qantas downgauging to the Boeing 767 and then the NZ-based Jetconnect 737-800 fleet, recent twin-aisle visitors have been firmly in the one-off categories and rarely fully laden: a Qantas A330 for the Rugby World Cup; an Air New Zealand 777-200ER for relief flights after the Christchurch earthquake or several 777-300ER flights for demonstrations and flyovers; foreign government A340s and 787s; a diverted United 747-100 in 1991; and the like.

Wellington Airport and its political masters – the city owns a third with NZ private sector infrastructure company Infratil owning the rest – will need to think long and hard about whether or not sinking the best part of half a billion dollars into an extension for just a handful of widebody operations really makes cost-benefit sense. Yet even mayor Celia Wade-Brown, a member of the Green Party, is in favour of expansion.

Without a longer runway, widebodies and long-haul nonstop flights can’t serve Wellington. With this extension, they might. It’s a hard gamble to make, but it’s even harder to see a way for Wellington’s economy to grow without it.