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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.
