In as little as nine years Dunedin, Invercargill, Christchurch and Wānaka airports could be getting a share of passengers unable to fly into Queenstown Airport.
The Queenstown Airport Corporation’s 2023 draft master plan shows steady growth until about 2032 when growth becomes constrained by the airport’s noise boundaries.
The Queenstown Airport Corporation (QAC) has been criticised by Board of Airline Representatives of New Zealand (Barnz) chief executive Cath O’Brien for not explaining what happens next.
"I think having only a really short-term view, which is what we have seen at Queenstown, is really limiting good planning."
Barnz describes itself as "the voice of New Zealand’s airline industry".
Ms O’Brien said her organisation wanted to understand how growth in tourism would be accommodated after the airport reached its noise limit boundaries.
She said the master plan went for eight years because "that’s as much time as they can get out of the noise boundaries".
QAC chief executive Glen Sowry responded this week saying the master plan was designed to deal only with physical aspects of the airport, rather than broader strategic issues.
One of QAC’s strategies has airlines and passengers making greater use of other airports in the South, if need be.
"Christchurch has significant capacity to grow.
"Dunedin has significant capacity to grow within existing infrastructure."
Invercargill was in a similar position, and Mr Sowry said Wānaka Airport had the potential to be a turbo-prop airport, if the community agreed.
Ms O’Brien said QAC’s master plan allowed for a "very small amount of growth" over the time to 2032.
"And then that will be the extent of the ability of Queenstown to grow at all.
"It more or less stops.
"And so if we are saying that we won’t have any more growth of tourism to Queenstown, then I think we really should have a public conversation about that.
"If you start to say the airport can’t grow any more beyond a certain point then you probably have to say those assets are end-of-life.
"You have to think about whether you invest in them if they are not going to be able to sustainably grow."
Mr Sowry said staying within the noise boundaries the airport had the potential to grow from the existing 2.4 million passengers to 3.2 million over the next 10 years.
"So [that is] a reasonable amount of growth over the next decade that can be accommodated."
Ms O’Brien said if it was the intention of QAC to limit growth and stay within its noise boundaries, the country needed to know.
"Because tourism tends to not stop just because one airport turns it away.
"It tends to go somewhere else."
She expected that would be Christchurch International Airport (CIAL).
While Dunedin Airport has no international services at present, it is already involved — along with Queenstown and Invercargill airports and eight regional tourism organisations — in an initiative called Southern Way which offered visitors the opportunity to "arrive through one airport and depart from another".
Dunedin Airport is about to embark on its 2050 master plan which would, among other things, consider "domestic and international passenger demand".
Mr De Bono said the airport had "few constraints to expansion should it be deemed necessary".
CIAL is not part of the Southern Way initiative, and with its plans for a new international airport at Tarras remains the elephant at the planning table as the other southern airports consider their futures.
Asked if there was any chance CIAL might be interested in a joint venture with QAC, spokeswoman Yvonne Densem said they were "keeping an open mind and have an open door to those sorts of questions".
"Ultimately that would be a decision for the shareholders [Queenstown Lakes District Council and Auckland International Airport Ltd’, and there’s been no indication that there’s an appetite for that," Mr Sowry said.
