New Zealand: Second runway critical to Auckland, says airport boss

Auckland Airport chief Adrian Littlewood says a second runway is critical to the future of the company and to the city. The airport yesterday announced a 17% increase in first profit to $165.9m and has just publicly notified revised plans for another runway to the north of the existing one. Littlewood said the new runway had long been part of plans for more aircraft and had just embarked on another step in the process that has been running for the last 20 years. "Fundamentally if Auckland wants to be an international grade city you've got to have that connectivity,'' he said. "It's really important that we as custodians of this asset for the future do the right thing for over 30 to 40 years." The number of passengers through the airport is forecast to grow from around 19m to 40m a year by 2044. Concerns have been raised about more noise but Littlewood said the modified plans had the same operating hours (7am to 10pm) that had been consented several years ago. New-generation aircraft were quieter than the ones they replaced, he said. Littlewood said the company had budgeted $200m for design, engineering and planning work for the runway that could be up to 2983m. The cost of building the new runway had not been released and is separate to the $1.8b spend on infrastructure in the five years to 2022 as part of its Airport of the Future project.<br/>