26 March 2020

Planning Wellington's international airport

Maurice McGreal discusses the tender process in the mid-1960s to ready Wellington's Rongotai airfield for DC-8 jet services:

The Minister of Civil Aviation at this time was the Hon Peter Gordon, who had been a trainee pilot during the last days of the war, and he was eager to settle the long-standing problem of Wellington's international connection, once and for all. The Civil Aviation Planning Unit was put to work identifying possible sites and proposals were put forward by all and sundry. Perhaps one of the most bizarre was that put forward by a Singapore engineering organisation (Tse Corporation) which proposed a runway along the top of the ridge running to the north from Pencarrow Head. A direct connection to the city of Wellington would then be via a bridge spanning the harbour entrance. Another proposal was to flatten Mana Island from end to end and connect it by a causeway to the mainland just south of Porirua Harbour.

The two rational alternatives that were considered for further study were the extension of Rongotai or the creation of a new runway at Paraparaumu...

- Maurice McGreal, A History of Civil Aviation in New Zealand, Auckland, 2003, p.152.

See also:
BlogSFO timelapse, 17 June 2016
Blog: Tower of power, 1 April 2010
Blog: Shanghai Pudong, 9 February 2009