Canberra airport: the reno and beyond

Australia's capital city, Canberra, has had a facelift - at its airport. The four-year renovation was completed in 2013. It looks very different. Although I liked the appearance of the old airport and its easy-come-easy-go accessibility, I have grown to like the new look, that has been hailed a success.

An article in Monocle (issue 84, volume 09, June 2015) espouses many of the positive features of the renovated Canberra Airport. These include deliberately designed aspects, such as the open layout, mood lighting, central security screening, passenger drop-off zone, and wide views of the planes and landscape.

Instead of an orbital road to a passenger drop-off zone, as in most airports (where drivers enter one end, cross the terminal, drop passengers, and exit at the other end) Canberra Airport has an axial system which eliminates the long drop-off zone that leads to bottlenecks. The axial system has an upstairs passenger drop-off zone and a downstairs passenger pick-up zone in a courtyard garden with foundations and public sculptures.

Canberra Airport is a family business, bought from the Australian government in the 1990s. Currently the facility is operating under capacity at 3 million passengers, but it has the ability to cope with 10 million. Future plans include the Asian market and short-haul Trans-Tasman flights to New Zealand.

What the article omitted was that, whereas Canberra is the capital of Australia, there has never been any international flights. None. Canberra has never had an international flight. Crikey Canberra!

The airport was named the Canberra International Airport, but there were no direct international flights. A few years ago it announced flights to Fiji. International flights to Fiji. But this was a misnomer. I tried it in 2008 and the flight was to Sydney, changed planes, then onto Fiji. During the renovations from 2009-2013, the 'international' sign was removed. The Canberra International Airport became the Canberra Airport.

There were two main reasons for no direct international flights: (1) there was no customs service - and there still isn't, and (2) the runways do not cater for jumbo-jets. However, smaller Boeings are a possibility. Now that the renovations are complete, and business routes are successful, Canberra Airport can now look to the future, beyond the reno, to international flights.

Comments

Pir-E-Kamil - The Perfect Mentor by Umera Ahmed: book review

The Perfect Mentor pbuh (2011) is set in Lahore and Islamabad in Pakistan. The novel commences with Imama Mubeen in medical university. She wants to be an eye specialist. Her parents have arranged for her to marry her first cousin Asjad. Salar Sikander, her neighbour, is 18 years old with an IQ of 150+ and a photographic memory. He has long hair tied in a ponytail. He imbibes alcohol, treats women disrespectfully and is generally a “weird chap” and a rude, belligerent teenager. In the past three years he has tried to commit suicide three times. He tries again. Imama and her brother, Waseem, answer the servant’s call to help Salar. They stop the bleeding from his wrist and save his life. Imama and Asjad have been engaged for three years, because she wants to finish her studies first. Imama is really delaying her marriage to Asjad because she loves Jalal Ansar. She proposes to him and he says yes. But he knows his parents won’t agree, nor will Imama’s parents. That

Flaws in the Glass, a self-portrait by Patrick White: book review

The manuscript, Flaws in the Glass (1981), is Patrick Victor Martindale White’s autobiography. White, born in 1912 in England, migrated to Sydney, Australia, when he was six months old. For three years, at the age of 20, he studied French and German literature at King’s College at the University of Cambridge in England. Throughout his life, he published 12 novels. In 1957 he won the inaugural Miles Franklin Literary Award for Voss, published in 1956. In 1961, Riders in the Chariot became a best-seller, winning the Miles Franklin Literary Award. In 1973, he was the first Australian author to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for The Eye of the Storm, despite many critics describing his works as ‘un-Australian’ and himself as ‘Australia’s most unreadable novelist.’ In 1979, The Twyborn Affair was short-listed for the Booker Prize, but he withdrew it from the competition to give younger writers the opportunity to win the award. His autobiography, Flaws in the Glass

Sister cities discussed: Canberra and Islamabad

Two months ago, in March 2015, Australia and Pakistan agreed to explore ways to deepen ties. The relationship between Australia and Pakistan has been strong for decades, and the two countries continue to keep dialogues open. The annual bilateral discussions were held in Australia in March to continue engagements on a wide range of matters of mutual interest. The Pakistan delegation discussed points of interest will include sports, agriculture, economic growth, trade, border protection, business, and education. The possible twinning of the cities of Canberra, the capital of Australia, and Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan, were also on the agenda (i.e. called twin towns or sister cities). Sister City relationships are twinning arrangements that build friendships as well as government, business, culture, and community linkages. Canberra currently has international Sister City relationships with Beijing in China and Nara in Japan. One example of existing

FEAST OR FAMINE

Search This Blog