A report that will be put to Invercargill City Councillors recommends that the Invercargill Airport terminal be renamed the Sir Tim Shadbolt Airport Terminal.
I am surprised that there is a push to get the ex-mayors name associated with the airport. Much of the detail in the above report is missing, especially the detail around cost. Invercargill's runway was lengthened under the theory that if a runway is built international flights will come. A real cart before the horse scenario and despite many promises international flights never arrived.
After the realization slowly sunk that no international flights were going to arrive, they changed the story to, well at least we now have a runway big enough to accommodate jets. At that sage we only had propellor planes doing scheduled flights with the odd diversion of jets when Queenstown was closed. But in amongst this they conveniently overlooked the fact AirNZ had been flying 737 jets into Invercargill since the 1970,s.
We also at one stage had a livestock company flying a 727 transport plane from Australia and landing with no difficulty but had to fly via Christchurch to fully refuel before flying back across the Tasman.
So while we can be proud of having this amazing long runway the reality is that it has come at a huge cost and achieves very little apart from giving the contractors more money whenever it needs resealed.
Queenstown airport operates very satisfactory with a runway about 500 metres shorter Invercargill.
I am surprised that there is a push to get the ex-mayors name associated with the airport. Much of the detail in the above report is missing, especially the detail around cost. Invercargill's runway was lengthened under the theory that if a runway is built international flights will come. A real cart before the horse scenario and despite many promises international flights never arrived.
After the realization slowly sunk that no international flights were going to arrive, they changed the story to, well at least we now have a runway big enough to accommodate jets. At that sage we only had propellor planes doing scheduled flights with the odd diversion of jets when Queenstown was closed. But in amongst this they conveniently overlooked the fact AirNZ had been flying 737 jets into Invercargill since the 1970,s.
We also at one stage had a livestock company flying a 727 transport plane from Australia and landing with no difficulty but had to fly via Christchurch to fully refuel before flying back across the Tasman.
So while we can be proud of having this amazing long runway the reality is that it has come at a huge cost and achieves very little apart from giving the contractors more money whenever it needs resealed.
Queenstown airport operates very satisfactory with a runway about 500 metres shorter Invercargill.