Jake Nelson

The carrier will use Wellington Airport as its home base for the ALIA, which it expects to receive starting late next year. It will initially fly cargo services with NZ Post from Wellington to Marlborough Airport on the other side of the Cook Strait.

The fuel, produced at Neste’s Singapore refinery, will be supplied to Air New Zealand at LAX by 30 November after being blended with conventional jet fuel to meet required specifications. The deal is nine times larger than Air New Zealand’s first SAF shipment from Neste in 2022.

Dubbed “Wilbur Air”, the “e-airline” will have priority access to the Skyportz vertiport network, with a “range of aircraft partners” to provide services including short- and long-range passenger transport and heavy-lift drone deliveries.

The facility in the Latrobe Aerospace Technology Precinct at Latrobe Regional Airport, backed by investment from the Victorian state government, will be used for Dovetail’s goal of retrofitting regional aircraft with batteries and hydrogen fuel cells for zero-emissions aviation.

The 12-week overhaul, set to begin on 24 June, will replace 18 ageing concrete slabs on the runway threshold that have reached the end of their life. The runway will be shortened from 3.5km to 2.7km during the works, meaning larger international aircraft will need to use Brisbane’s parallel runway.

In the latest Australian Aviation Network Overview for March 2024, Airservices Australia said that its “capacity constraints” affected only 1.3 per cent of flights for the month, with 4 per cent of ground delays and just 1 per cent of cancellations attributable to Airservices.