Latest news with #PhilipChandler
Otago Daily Times
09-08-2025
- Otago Daily Times
Queenstown airport's amazing 90-year flight path
In 1935, when the tiny Queenstown airfield was licensed to become an aerodrome, who'd have projected its growth over the following 90 years? In the first of a two-part series, Philip Chandler provides an overview of how it's become New Zealand's fourth busiest airport, tracking key milestones including controversy over its ownership. Next Thursday marks Queenstown Airport's 90th anniversary as a licensed airfield, however the first plane landed four years earlier, on January 4, 1931. A large crowd watched an NZ Airways Simmonds Spartan biplane land in the Frankton racecourse, with deputy mayor Bill Anderson officially welcoming Captain Trevor 'Tiny' White. A newspaper report said the racecourse "will probably be known in future years as the Queenstown airport", and noted nearby farmer Mr J.E. O'Connell had "harrowed a piece of ground especially for the landing". For a time the airfield also doubled as a golf course with golfers stopping play to let planes land. The first regular service from 1938 was the Wigley family's Queenstown-Mount Cook Airways — today's airport entrance is Sir Henry Wigley Dr. However, as a forerunner of Covid's effect on the operation, the airfield closed during World War 2 to become a Queenstown Home Guard training ground. After the war, several ex-WW2 pilots formed Southern Scenic Air Services, adding Milford to their scenic flights when its airstrip opened in 1952. In 1964, Mount Cook Airlines was licensed to fly in DC-3s, triggering the first terminal build and the lengthening of the grass runway. In 1968 the new Hawker Siddeley turboprops saw the runway and apron sealed. Former mayor Sir John Davies — whose late dad Bill managed Mount Cook Airline's light aircraft division from the airport— recalls passengers and their luggage being weighed at the airline's Rees St office, from where they were bussed directly to the plane for boarding. By '74, however, a new terminal had check-in facilities. At the time the airport was owned 60% by the three local councils — later amalgamated into Queenstown Lakes District Council — and 40% by the government. In '88, when the government was shedding assets, then-mayor Davies' QLDC bought the government's share for $3million, becoming the country's only council to own an airport outright — Queenstown Airport Corporation (QAC) was set up to run it. Davies also announced the board aimed to introduce jet services. "Within an hour, Christchurch Airport chairman Morgan Fahey rang me and said, 'young man, you don't understand aviation, you'll never get a jet into Queenstown'." That was proven wrong when Ansett NZ started a BAe 146 'whisper jet' service in '89 and Air NZ followed with Boeing jets in '92, hushkitted to soften their noise after a number of locals had campaigned against their introduction. In 1995, Air NZ introduced the first direct flight to Australia to turn the former airfield into a fully fledged international airport. Davies, who also had stints as QAC's chairman, says he also got airlines to agree to higher landing fees to fund terminal expansion, as sometimes passengers waited 45 minutes on the tarmac before using congested baggage and Customs areas. To his shock, QAC in 2010, with council support, sold 24.9% of the company to Auckland International Airport for $27.7m, claiming it would benefit from that airport's expertise and strategic connections. Davies was part of a Queenstown group who invested $365,000 in a legal battle to prevent the move, however there was an 11th-hour agreement whereby Auckland placed a lid on its shareholding — it had wanted an option to lift its stake to 50%. He estimates the airport's now worth about a billion dollars, "so what they sold for $27m would today be worth $250m". The sell-off also saw Queenstown's council foregoing 24.9% of all future dividends from the airport. Meantime, ZQN's continued expanding hugely — between 1995 and 2018, QAC invested $120m-plus in capital expenditure including four terminals, two control towers and six runway upgrades or extensions. In 2012, required navigation performance (RNP) technology greatly improved the reliability of jet services. Then in 2016 came another game-changer — the introduction of night flights, till 10pm, which spread the airport's operating hours. Improvements to pave the way for night flights cost about $20m. Today the airport's the fourth busiest in NZ and the only one, so far, to have jumped ahead of pre-Covid passenger numbers. And what used to be an airfield 'out of town', surrounded by Frankton Flats farmland, is now slap-bang in the midst of the Whakatipu Basin's main commercial and residential hub.
Otago Daily Times
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Otago Daily Times
Take a bow, Showbiz Queenstown
Some of the hardest-working local volunteers are Showbiz Queenstown's cast and crew, who spend months building up to their musical each year. Ahead of next week's latest show, Philip Chandler delves into the history of the society, who staged their first production 50 years ago last August. With Showbiz Queenstown entering its second half-century with Into The Woods starting next week, it's surely time to make a song and dance about it. As the Queenstown Musical and Operatic Society it launched in 1974 with Salad Days, in which Fae Robertson played "an attractive and saucy Rowena". She says it grew out of a loose group of entertainers, The Gaiety Club, who'd sing for Paddy's Day and the like. She subsequently had singing/dancing roles for 18 years and also served as president and secretary. A set builder, her stepfather Owen Lockhart also wrote the 1979 show, Beyond The Moonlight, depicting local history. "We paid an actor because we were short of a male lead and every time a coconut he missed the cue to lead us in." Later, when helping out at the bar during a show, she got her drinks mixed up — "instead of asking a customer if they'd like an RTD, I said, 'would you like an STD?"' Robertson also played a major role securing their first sponsor, Armada's Jim Boult, so they could employ their first director. "He said, 'how much?', I think I said '10 grand' and he said, 'is that enough?"' "That was a momentous step," says Greg Thompson, who was president when the first director came onboard for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat in '88. "It just lifted everything up and improved the way we did the show including lighting and sound. "Since then we've come full circle almost in that we've got our own people being directors who have learnt through it." An example is Marty Newell, who's trod the boards every year, except three years, since 1995. After serving as assistant director he directed Jesus Christ Superstar in 2014, co-directed Annie in 2016 and is director again this month. He says "it's also very good to bring in a professional to bring in new ideas and teach people different things". "The standard just keeps getting better and better, and I think we push ourselves every year to be better and better. "We want to be the best — we don't want to be an amateur musical society, so people come in and experience a show they could see in Christchurch or Auckland." Two hugely ambitious shows were 2017's Mamma Mia!, which used the Events Centre, and Les Miserables in 2009, where the Queenstown Memorial Centre had a revolving stage. "Les Mis was something we were told we could never do, which of course just fired us up to actually do it," Newell says. Thompson, who renamed the Queenstown Musical Society Showbiz, says he and other long-timers have experienced three ever-better iterations of the Memorial Centre. "Until the first modification it was absolutely awful — we had to hang scaffolding pipes so we could hang lights up and we put in temporary power supplies because we would have blown up the whole thing otherwise." Someone who knew the venue well was the late Glenn 'Scooter' Reid, whom Thompson brought along when he taught at Wakatipu High and who later ran the lighting for about 20 years and also served as president — the light and sound booth's named in his honour. Someone else who's grown through the society is Nicole McLean, who played Velma in 2013's Chicago and is now choreographer for the second year running. Another is current president Emma Pullar, who originally played an orphan in Annie in 1989 and whose daughter Ruby was an orphan in the next Annie in 2016 when she was 7. A special repeat was Showbiz's The Sound of Music in 2012, when cast from the show 30 years earlier visited for a reunion. They included Stelios Yiakmis, who went on to act in TV dramas like Shortland Street and McLeod's Daughters. In the '82 version "I was singing Rolf's song, I am 17, going on 18, on my 17th birthday," he told Mountain Scene. Thompson says his only regret is Showbiz, which can no longer use its Isle St rehearsal room, is homeless. "Every other society I can think of in Otago and Southland has got their own space, and poor old Showbiz has been shoved around from pillar to post." Reader giveaway Our friends at Showbiz Queenstown are giving us two double passes to next Thursday's opening night of Into The Woods, to give to you. To be in to win, just email ed@ — subject line 'Showbiz' — by noon Tuesday, May 13, and we'll notify the winners directly. Into The Woods is being staged at the Queenstown Memorial Centre till Saturday, May 24 — for more info, or to buy tickets, visit
