Newsroom - Hawke's Bay Airport

Newsroom

Hawke's Bay Air Ambulance Centre

The construction of a hangar complex, apron, taxiway and administrative building for Skyline Aviation and the Hawke's Bay Air Ambulance Service was completed in September 2009. The hangar complex houses Skyline's three fixed wing aircraft and provides facilities for efficient patient transfers and is Skyline's new administration centre.

Corporatisation

After considerable time and effort, finally it has happened, Hawke's Bay Airport Ltd came into being on 1 July 2009! At the same time the old cost sharing joint venture, which had worked so well for over 40 years, was dissolved. As far as the traveling public, airline operators, tenants and other users of the airport are concerned there is no change, its business as usual.

In late October 2009 John Palairet, the chairman of the board, announced that a runway extension to 1750 metres was actively under consideration and that Beca Infrastructure had been appointed to carry out the design and provide a final estimate of cost to enable the business case to be finalised. This would enable domestic jets to operate from the runway. At the same time it was expected that there would be progress on the first stage of the business park .

Passenger numbers, which reached almost 450,000 for the 2008 financial year have since declined around 10% as a result of the economic recession.