Sydney Airport can cope – for 10 years

The Sydney Airport Corporation Ltd estimates it will take another decade before traffic levels again approach those experienced during the Sydney Olympic games.

The collapse of Ansett, terrorist attacks in the US, the Bali bombings and derogatory Australian government travel alerts for a number of overseas destinations, have taken the pressure off Australia's number one airport.

But by 2024, passenger numbers will have increased from 27.6 million a year now to 68.3 million on nearly 400,000 aeroplanes (240,000 now) and freight volume will be just short of 1 million tonnes a year on 12,350 aeroplanes.

For passengers, that translates into an average of 171 passengers an aircraft movement in 2024, compared with 115 now.

But director of corporate affairs for SCAL, Chris Falvey, told Informa's NSW Transport Infrastructure conference in June, there would be no need to significantly upgrade the airport for years or build a second airport.

The 80 movements an hour cap would stay, as would the slightly flexible 10pm to 5am curfew.

Significantly bigger aeroplanes will handle extra passengers. SACL estimates 4.1% passenger growth a year will be met by a 2.1% increase in aeroplane movements.

“Qantas has already ordered the 550 passenger Airbus A380 which will be operating by the end of 2006,” he said.

Also, on the domestic front, the new 300 plus passenger Airbus A330 will become Qantas' preferred domestic workhorse over the Boeing 767 carrying about 250 passengers.

Falvey said the airport would be becoming “pretty busy” by 2018/19 with 80 movements an hour peaks about 7am for a couple of hours. But by 2023/24, the peak movements would run for four hours from 6.30am and hit it again, briefly about 6pm.

He said in answer to a question about exceeding the movement cap that it was highly unlikely such a legislated constraint would be changed.

He suggested there was little point anyway because if it was there would probably be constraints imposed by insufficient runway, taxiway, gate or baggage handling capacity.

As far as terminal expansion is concerned, the international terminal will expand north and possibly west through the freight sheds with freight relocated on the north side of Qantas drive.

Domestic terminals will loop together at the western end then expand east.