Perth Airport
Perth Airport is an international, domestic and general aviation airport serving Perth, Western Australia.
It is the fourth busiest airport in Australia measured by passenger movements and falls within the boundaries of the cities of Belmont, Kalamunda and Swan.
Perth Airport covers a total of 2,105 hectares of airport property.
Since 1997, it has been operated by Perth Airport Pty Ltd under a 99-year lease from the federal government.
Location
The airport is located approximately east of the Perth central business district. It is one of three civilian airports within the Perth metropolitan area, the others being Jandakot Airport and Rottnest Island Airport. Besides the civilian airports, there are also two military airports within the Perth metropolitan area. The larger of the two is RAAF Base Pearce, to the north of Perth Airport, at Bullsbrook. The other is south-west of Perth Airport, and is a part of the military base of HMAS Stirling on Garden Island.Perth Airport is located on the Aboriginal traditional Whadjak-Noongar country.
Growth and impact
The airport saw strong passenger growth from 2000 to 2012, primarily due to the state's prolonged mining boom and an increase in traffic from international low-cost carrier airlines. By the end of June 2012, Perth Airport experienced passenger growth of 11.7% internationally and 6.9% domestically, resulting in an overall increase of 10.3%. Passenger numbers trebled in the 10 years from 2002 to 2012 with more than 12.6 million people travelling through the airport in 2012. Since 2012, the winding down of the mining boom has seen the demand for both intra- and interstate services contract, with domestic passengers falling from a peak of 9.9 million to 9.5 million by the end of June 2016. The growth in passenger numbers since 2012 has been wholly due to expansion of international services from the city. The first mining boom in 1979 had 679,000 passengers use the airport. This number now travels through the airport every eighteen days.As well as passenger movements however, complaints about the impact of the airport on the residents of Perth have grown. The City of Canning, one area that is affected, accepts that "aircraft noise is an important issue" and that " does impact heavily on those suburbs under the flightpaths". Another affected area, the City of Swan, "has experienced significant issues". Indeed, planning policy adopted by the Government of Western Australia recognises that some aircraft noise is “not compatible with residential or educational” land use, two fundamental uses of land in any conurbation that is home to over two million residents—such as Greater Perth.
History
Early days
Prior to the opening of the Perth Airport, civilian air services for the city were provided from Maylands Aerodrome as well as on the city's foreshore at Langley Park. By the end of the 1930s, it became clear that the Maylands Aerodrome was limited in the size and speed of aircraft it was able to handle thus causing them to seek an alternative site for a future airport.Site selection and preparation of the original plans was undertaken by NM Fricker of the Department of Civil Aviation. In 1938, land was selected and purchased for the new aerodrome. The site selected in what was at the time Guildford, was an area of land granted by Governor James Stirling to local man John Scott, which later became the long disused Dunreath Golf Course.
A plaque located on a roadside wall of the old International terminal remains in permanent memory of Scott:
Military operations
Even before civil aviation operations could commence at the new site, the onset of World War II saw the facility being redesigned for military purposes as a temporary base for the Royal Australian Air Force and United States Navy, known as RAAF Station Guildford, primarily to supplement RAAF Base Pearce. Royal Australian Air Force No. 85 Squadron was based there from February 1943.Despite military use of the airfield, civil services operated by Qantas Empire Airways and Australian National Airways commenced from the location in 1944. This was despite bitter protest from military authorities who felt civilian operations would undermine the defence and camouflage needs of the location.
The move was agreed to by the government, as the larger types of aircraft of the day being operated by the two airlines could simply not be handled at Maylands, notwithstanding the small grass airfield, lack of passenger facilities, and approaches being difficult due to surrounding industrial infrastructure. Using Douglas DC-3 aircraft, ANA flew the first commercial service from the aerodrome to Adelaide. On 17 June 1944, Qantas made its inaugural flight to Ceylon via Exmouth using a modified Consolidated B-24 Liberator, arriving in Perth on 3 June 1944 having been released to the airline by the British Government.
Early civilian operations
Full civilian operations at the Guildford Aerodrome commenced in 1944. Civil operations at Maylands continued albeit reduced until 30 June 1963, when the airport closed and its function as a secondary airport was taken over by Jandakot Airport the very next day.Guildford Aerodrome was at best only a basic airfield. On a large open airfield with plenty of space, an unobtrusive control tower was hidden away amongst a collection of buildings inherited from the wartime operations at the site. The Department of Civil Aviation inherited a large number of operating vehicles from the former military occupants, including an assortment of vehicles including Blitz wagons, Dodge command cars and weapon carriers, large trucks and various makes of fire tenders, jeeps and ambulances. Boarding aircraft at Guildford was described as being a bit like boarding a bus given the lack of passenger facilities at the time.
In 1948, the Horrie Miller owned MacRobertson Miller Airlines relocated from Maylands to Guildford. followed by newly formed government airline Trans Australia Airlines on 2 December of that same year, operating Douglas C-54 Skymasters on its Perth – Melbourne – Sydney route. Due to the lack of road transportation across the Nullarbor Plain, it was at this time that Guildford became the scene of very busy cargo operations. Fresh fruit, vegetables and manufactured goods were being flown from east to west and back again.
The airport was granted international status in September 1952, and renamed from Guildford Aerodrome to Perth Airport in March 1953. Officiated by the Federal Minister for Civil Aviation, Hubert Anthony, the official ceremony for the renaming took place on the main apron in front of a converted Bellman hangar used by TAA as its passenger terminal. At the time, a new international terminal building was under construction but had not been completed in time for the ceremony. This new terminal was being constructed using steel and cladding recycled from American-built military quonset buildings being dismantled and shipped over from Manus Island.
It was also on this day that Qantas commenced its Wallaby service using Lockheed Constellations from Sydney to South Africa via Perth, the Cocos Islands and Mauritius.
The jet age
Towards the mid-1950s, airline travel was still being used by only a small percentage of the population. At that time, only 8% of the population had ever flown, but as the marketplace evolved, so did the types of people and their reasons for flying.It was at this time the airport began to experience the full effects of the jet age. Both Air India and Qantas commenced operating Boeing 707s in the mid to late 1950s from Perth to Singapore and the subcontinent. As the aircraft of the day grew faster more demanding due to their sophistication, facilities at the airport continued to improve to accommodate them. By the mid-1960s the airport was serving its first domestic pure jet engine aircraft, commencing with a Boeing 727 in 1964, and the Douglas DC-9 in 1967, both types operated by TAA and Ansett ANA. It was at this time that the airport was one of the few major airports in the country which operated without curfews, and due to the increased number and frequency of flights operating from the airport it gave birth to what was then referred to as the midnight horror or red-eye special, known in more recent history as the red-eye flight.
Demise of the hangar terminals
In 1960, the then international terminal previously constructed from steel and cladding from Manus Island was dismantled and re-erected in the suburb of Cannington. Known as the Alco building, it was re-designed for use as a commercial facility.The removal of the steel structure made way for the construction of an entirely new combined domestic and international passenger terminal, constructed on the northern side of the airfield. It was in 1962 that airlines were able to move from their hangars into a new combined passenger terminal, designed by the Commonwealth Department of Works and opened just in time to handle 1962 British Empire and Commonwealth Games traffic increases. The new combined terminal was opened that same year by then Minister for Civil Aviation, Senator Shane Paltridge; it was built in an area positioned between the present terminals 3 and 4 and is currently used as the crew base for both Qantas and Jetstar, and offices for airlines and support firms.
International terminal development
From 1962 onwards, both the domestic and international passenger operations at the airport were provided by a single terminal. When it opened, the terminal's facilities included an observation deck, a pond with black swans, and a cocktail lounge named the Orbit Inne, which became popular with locals as it was the only place in Perth that served drinks on Sunday nights. By the arrival of the Boeing 747 on 3 September 1971, the terminal had reached its capacity, and modelling of future passenger numbers showed it would be unable to handle any further increases in passenger demand.In November 1980, the Federal Transport Minister, Ralph Hunt, announced that a new international terminal would be built in Perth at a cost of, equivalent to in. Design of the new international terminal commenced in 1982, with one of the key principles of the design being the allowance for easy future expansion as the needs of the airport dictated. The project called for the construction of a new terminal, apron, airside roads, access roads, car parks and other passenger facilities.
Construction of the new international terminal and control tower commenced in March 1984 on the south-eastern side of the airfield. In 1984, the road leading to the new terminal, Horrie Miller Drive was named in honour of local aviation pioneer Horrie Miller. The terminal was officially opened on 25 October 1986 by Prime Minister Bob Hawke, with the new terminal receiving passengers just days after. The newly built control tower was the tallest in Australia at the time of its construction, and remains the tallest in Australia.
Upon completion, the terminal was able to process up to five Boeing 747 aircraft per hour and accommodated a peak passenger volume of 6,000 passengers per hour. Twenty years later, in the 12 months to June 2006 the terminal processed over 2.027 million passengers, surpassing a 1996 projection of 1.016 million passengers in that period.