Piloting city airport’s flight to success

Dunedin Airport has had an impressive increase in both passengers and revenue in the time chief executive Richard Roberts has been in charge. David Loughrey talks to the man behind the busy runways.

Richard Roberts loves Dunedin.

He’ll tell you about it, with a certain vigour.He can’t believe it when people say the weather is bad.

"I’ve always said winters in Dunedin are tropical; mate, you spend 29 years in northern England and you know what winters are about.

"You know what they’re about."

He says all that in a reasonably strong northern accent, apparently undimmed after 22 years in New Zealand.

Combined with his height (he’s tall), his passionate delivery (he’s quite intense), and his dress sense (he’s pretty sharp), his views come across with a slightly alarming degree of force.

In his three years in charge of the airport, Mr Roberts has a good number of runs on the board, and there’s a strong possibility people are starting to listen.

Before he took over in 2014, Dunedin businesses were complaining bitterly of inadequate services.

Air New Zealand had dropped direct flights between Dunedin and Auckland from three to two a day, and the last direct flight back to Dunedin left during the afternoon, meaning a full day’s business was not possible without an overnight stay.

On the international front, Virgin’s direct flights between Dunedin and Sydney and Melbourne had been cut.

Since his appointment a year later, things have turned around dramatically.

Seat numbers in and out of the airport have increased by 227,712, or 22% since 2015, while passenger numbers have climbed by 162,018, or 19%. Revenue is up 26%, and the airport, owned by the Dunedin City Council and the Government, should see its surplus after tax up 71%.

Flights are now, on average, 80% full.

In January this year the airport hosted more than one million passengers through its doors in a 12 month period for the first time.

Its car park is being expanded to cope with numbers.

Last month  Air New Zealand announced another 70,000 seats a year between Dunedin and Auckland.

While Sydney and Melbourne flights have not returned, the three to four-day-a-week Brisbane service has survived, despite the end of an alliance between Air New Zealand and Virgin.

The facility has no doubt benefited from the tourism boom New Zealand is experiencing, but a comment at the recent Trenz tourism conference in Dunedin may give some insight into another reason for the improvement.

Air NZ chief revenue officer Cam Wallace said the airline had a good relationship with Dunedin Airport, and its chief executive, whom Mr Wallace described as "a force of nature".

It’s not a bad description.

Richard Roberts (52) is a force of nature who began his career below ground, rather than on the wing.He studied mechanical engineering after leaving school in his home town of Barnsley, in South Yorkshire, in those days a big coal-mining town.

He started off "designing and building pits".

"I spent a little bit of time down the pits, not all day, every day, thank the Lord."

His wife Louise came for a six-month stint working in Dunedin, he came for a month and did a tour of the South Island.

"I was just completely blown away, but more blown away with Dunedin.

"The pace of life, the friendliness, all those things we now have to remind ourselves of regularly, or we’ll just become bloody complacent; its a very very special place."

Mr Roberts, whose two daughters Avi and Ella are both now studying at the University of Otago,  worked as a project manager on building sites.

That included the Meridian Mall in George St, and time in Christchurch and Hanmer working on a redevelopment of Hanmer Springs.

A job came up as operations manager at Dunedin Airport in 1999, and after some CV help from his wife, he began his stint.Sixteen years later he took the top job.

On the Air NZ view of him (Mr Roberts reckons he was described as a freak of nature, rather than a force), he says his work in its Auckland offices is about "being there all the time, constantly meeting, constantly communicating".

But the key, he says, is not to promise what you cannot provide."It’s got to be open, honest and authentic.

"If you don’t tell lies, you don’t need a memory. Just stick to the truth. "Let’s not  try and sell something that’s not worth selling, let’s be really honest."

Fortunately Dunedin has something worth selling.

When staff from airlines such as Air NZ, Jetstar and Virgin come to Dunedin, Mr Roberts takes them on a Dunedin street tour, up Baldwin St, out kayaking with seals and collecting cockles at Purakaunui, immersing the visitors above their waist in crisp southern seawater.

Once the cockles are in the bag they are dropped at a restaurant to be prepared for the visitors’ dinner."That’s Dunedin, you know that you can achieve that, the community’s so close."

"These guys can’t believe how close everything is."

But for Mr Roberts, selling Dunedin is not enough.

At a media conference at the aforementioned Trenz conference he took the liberty of texting me a question he wanted asked of local government figures who were presenting on the southern region’s attractions.

"Question fur  [sic] panel. Are you guys doing anything together to promote the region and not just your individual areas?" it read.

Mr Roberts was keen to elaborate last week on what he describes as the dropping of "parochial barriers".

"One thing that’s really powerful is if the region comes together: Waitaki; Clutha; Southland; Central; Dunedin, if this region could come together, and come together with an authentic kind of message, it would absolutely blow people away.

"A tourist does not see that regional barrier.

"They don’t pass through a barrier into Waitaki.

"Do you know what people want to see when they come here?

"The Moeraki boulders.

"They’re not in our region.

"Does it matter?"

His idea is for local government leaders to get the regional tourism organisations (like Enterprise Dunedin, which is run by the council) to come together to sell the whole region through to Queenstown and Fiordland.

The move, he says, could help Queenstown, which is bursting at the seams.

"We can actually act as a relief valve for that.

"There are only five airports in New Zealand that take international flights from Australia, and Dunedin is one of those.

"Can we bring these people into two ports, and exchange them around the lower south?

"It’s aspirational, but it needs people to forget those parochial boundaries and work together as a destination and as an itinerary."

On the expansion of Dunedin’s links to Australia — or more specifically, bringing back Sydney and Melbourne flights — there is no news yet, but Mr Roberts is using the same tactics that have been successful for domestic flights.

"We’re just following the plan of communicating and building relationships and trust, exchanging data."

With tourism arrivals expected to rise from 3.7 million last year to 5.1 million in 2024, those tactics might just bear fruit.