Long-term plan for Ashburton airport to take off

Nicole Mathewson Reporter from The Press

From local democracy reporter Jonathan Leask:

It’s a 30-year plan, not a next-few-years plan.

That was the message as the outgoing Ashburton District Council adopted the Ashburton Airport Development Plan at the final meeting of its term last week.

Chief executive Hamish Riach said creating the plan was about establishing a general direction for the future of the site.

“The idea of the 30-year plan is to create a framework for the development of the airport over the next number of decades”.

That framework in the plan aims to make the airport more financially independent, support its viability, and ensure it is safely and sustainably managed for the next 30 years.

Mayor Neil Brown said it is a 30-year plan to be used as a guide and “if it needs updating, we will update it as required”.

The consultation process raised concerns that the existing grass runways are already operating near capacity and will not cope with the forecast increase in flights proposed in the plan.

The council recently put in place a tracking system to monitor landings and from the data available estimates the current annual usage to be about 7500 to 8000 movements.

The plan states that “this level of usage can put stress on the grass runways, requiring steps to be taken to manage wear and tear. This could be expected to worsen if the airport grows”.

Sealing the runways is an option but it is not defined in the 30-year-plan, instead, it will be considered in any long-term plan process when the need arises.

“It will be dependent on the rate of development,” Riach said.

“There may be a development within the framework of this plan at a future point that would mean there needs to be an alteration to the runway but no one could predict when that would be.”

Safety was a key issue raised during the consultation, mainly focused on the potential increased air traffic.

A majority of the concerns had centred on the potential lease of land for a large-scale flying school operated by NZ Air Academy.

The council decided the NZ Air Academy proposal is a separate but related matter and deferred any decisions on the proposal until the development plan had been adopted.

Any proposal from the flight school will be presented to the council for consideration.

The plan confirmed the proposed location of the recreational, commercial, and hangar home precincts.

Any hangar home precinct, where people could live at the airport, will be explored, and it will require a District Plan Change process.

It also provides for the Ashburton Aviation Museum expansion plans.

* Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air