BARNZ Executive Director Justin Tighe-Umbers has called for Auckland Airport to reveal whether it will return its excess charges. Airlines want an answer to this question before the Airport announces its next dividend payment to shareholders.
Read more about it in the New Zealand Herald
All BARNZ members are invited to attend our General Meeting this month (this is a members-only event).
It will be on 27 February at the Air New Zealand Engineering Campus by Auckland Airport. Coffee will be available from 10am, the meeting will start at 10.30.
We have an exciting agenda planned, including a presentation from Andre Lovatt, General Manager Airport Development and Delivery on the capital spending and transformation of Auckland Airport. Other items on the agenda are the BARNZ strategy for the year and a review of our Constitution.
Airways New Zealand, the New Zealand air traffic controller, is consulting with airlines and others about the new prices it wants to set for the next three years, starting July 2019.
Airways wants to increase prices by 6.3% on average over those three years, but the increase will be front loaded.
This is to fund investments in digital towers, a new ATM system, UAV detection, the flexible contingent runway at Auckland and a business transformation programme.
Some of these initiatives should save costs in the long run and others are necessary investments, but the proposed increase will be a substantial burden on an airline sector already facing growing costs on multiple fronts.
BARNZ will work with Airways to try to find ways to mitigate the cost impact while still making sure that essential improvements are delivered.
Biosecurity NZ (MPI) is making progress in its trial to screen inbound baggage for biosecurity risk material. It has now installed a new Rapiscan unit in the MPI/Arrivals Hall at Auckland Airport, which it will use to develop an algorithm to detect biosecurity risk items.
Anyone who would like to attend a demonstration of the new baggage scanner at the International terminal in Auckland at 8.45am on Tuesday 18th December please email jen.fagan@mpi.govt.nz to confirm our attendance. The minister for Biosecurity will be in attendance.
A new working group has been set up to work on improving the jet fuel supply to Auckland Airport.
The first focus of the group will be the fuel storage location at Auckland Airport. The current JUHI storage near the domestic terminal will need to move by 2035 at the latest to accommodate new terminal buildings. The new JUHI location will be chosen based on safety, cost, operations, land use and constructability – to make sure we get the storage location right for the future of the airport.
The decision on storage location at the airport will also drive decisions on improving capacity on the current fuel pipeline from Wiri to the Airport and on whether we need extra jet fuel storage at Wiri and how much.
Once these issues are resolved, the group will then consider the upstream supply chain from the Marsden Point refinery to Wiri.
The working group includes Auckland Airport, Air New Zealand, the oil companies and BARNZ. BARNZ will provide regular updates on the group’s progress, so watch this space.
In the meantime, Refining NZ has reported making good progress on monitoring and analysis of the pipeline from Marsden Point to Wiri, so that incidents like the pipeline outage in September 2017 should be detected and resolved much more quickly.
Refining NZ is also developing a facility for fast truck refuelling at Marsden Point. This can provide some back-up supply during any future pipeline outage. It is up to individual airlines to discuss using this option with their fuel supplier.