The only real offer of an alternative to Sydney Airport is going another round this morning in the form of an advertisement in the Australian Financial Review.
‘Real’ because Canberra Airport exists, and as a biased user, it is an excellent airport from the perspective of someone who lives almost exactly the same trip time away from each airport. (Canberra fares cost more, but you save considerably on parking.)
However analysing the Canberra claims does bring up some issues. A 3.5 hour road or bus trip from the Sydney CBD to Civic is never going to be an acceptable answer to the user of a large corporate travel account, and thus, not an answer to the impending difficulties of business travellers accessing Sydney which in turn is why Sydney this century will be dead and buried as the premier business gateway to Australia without a new airport in the Sydney basin.
The notion that leisure, discretionary or self employed or SME travellers will take the pressure off Sydney Airport by migrating to a remote site, such as Canberra, is not viable, because there has to be a fare to cover that distance, and if it is on a much needed high speed rail link by say, 2030 if we are optimistic, that fare and the time penalty will just make Sydney too damn hard.
And by 2030 the race will have been run and lost and Sydney’s preeminence as a business and leisure destination will be over. While this writer remains optimistic that the costs of high speed rail corridor construction will fall, and demand will rise, and the moment when HSR becomes highly viable and desirable as a transport system in its own right is approaching, the stapling of HSR to the business case to airport developments isn’t helpful.
Put together, the two issues are capable of paralysing the decision making process. No-one in their right mind would take a flight to Canberra from Sydney in preference to a 50 minute HSR ride in a big seat. But the only justification for flying to Canberra from Sydney today is, marginally, a connection to an international flight.
And even that is questionable, given the absurdly time consuming mucking around getting from domestic to international, even if you give up on the coach transfers and just take the train between the respective stations under each set of terminals.
Murrays Coaches takes three hours 15 minutes to get from Sydney International to downtown Canberra. The seats are more comfortable than any jet cabin and the complete trip time is comparable, and the fare starts at $15.
Driving or taking the coach, depending on where in each city you need to start or finish your journey, is overwhelmingly likely to prove more practicable than flying between Sydney and Canberra. The current Sydney-Canberra train service is infrequent, and incredibly slow, yet quite pleasant, and in fact, very useful for avoiding the City Rail service between Goulburn or the main southern highlands towns and Sydney for a small premium. This user can access the internet much of the way on the Canberra trains, a valuable productivity trade off between a faster drive time and outrageous parking charges and the usual road tolls on the way.
The existence of a bus competitor between Sydney-Canberra is always going to undermine high speed rail if the mistake is made to frame the benefits of HSR entirely around Sydney-Canberra. When Air Asia X starts flying to Canberra, which is highly likely in the next few years, its group tour clients are certain to use pre-dawn coach transfers to Sydney hotels at going wholesale rates of less than $10 a trip and wouldn’t use the HSR option even if the gleaming 300 kmh trains were ready and waiting when the flights to Kuala Lumpur begin, since at Sydney, they would still need a station-hotel transfer.
HSR deserves to be seen on its true merits, which are national-regional in scope, not just as a particular city pair business case.
Which raises the question, how relevant is Canberra to the Sydney airport capacity crisis? The answer is that it does have a valuable role. Some tour operators will find international services to Canberra and coach connections highly attractive. Canberra Airport’s claims that viable international flights to New Zealand and Asia will begin in the near future are highly likely to come true because Canberra in its own right is generating growing demand. It is difficult to envisage Jetstar, Singapore Airlines and/or its forthcoming low cost wide body carrier, Hong Kong Airways, and of course Air NZ, ignoring non-stops to Canberra in the latter half of this decade.
Canberra is also well located to aggregate air cargo, and compete directly with Sydney Airport for some of its jet freighter business.
The days of flying to Brisbane from Canberra via Sydney are long gone for most travellers, and if only Virgin Australia could apply itself to non-stop flights to Perth, the days of not being able to get seats on the limited Qantas flights to Perth and having to make transfers at Melbourne Airport will also be over.
It is highly likely that as Canberra Airport grows, the utility of Canberra-Sydney flights will fall, even if the HSR takes forever, or never.
This is the heart of this morning’s display ad in the AFR.
16 Comments
What SYD capacity crisis? Qantas is in the process of self-destruction, retrenchment and implosion; there will be plenty of excess capacity available at SYD soon.
It’s kind of sad that any topic in Plane Talking that doesn’t involve “questioning” Qantas’ questionable decisions, will result in comments that will automatically digress into Qantas management bashing. Notice the similarities between Plane Talking and the Daily Telegraph.
Let me put in the argument why Canberra being the second airport does not make sense.
1. According to studies carried by US Dept. of Transport and US National Safety Council, travel by air is significantly safer than travel on road (on per mile basis):
http://www.nsc.org/news_resources/injury_and_death_statistics/Pages/TheOddsofDyingFrom.aspx
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/space/how-risky-is-flying.html
If I am the head of HR of a large corporation or a Government department, I wouldn’t send my staff to do SYD-CBR by car than by air by default, as I would know for a fact there is an order of magnitude difference for the likelihood of travellers being killed while on air vs on road. I would only send travellers on road if there’s very good reasons to do otherwise. (Note those statistics are based on US, but I do not expect the trend would be completely opposite in Australia).
2. If I ask a traveller to travel by his/her own car rather than by air to do SYD – CBR, I would need to reimburse the travellers for the mileage used. Let say we used ATO’s 2011 approved deduction rate of 63 cents per kilometre for a car less than 1600cc. The distance is SYD – CBR being 290km (according to NSW RTA trip calculator), the reimbursement to the traveller would be $182.70 one way. Now, I think a SYD/CBR air ticket would be less than $182.70 for discount economy. Now, where is the economic reason to drive to CBR rather than fly? Of course, if you can get multiple persons travel together in one car then the scenario is totally different (and it would be drive’s favour).
Of course, if you catch a Murrays coaches than it would be $15 (as stated by Ben) – but I would be interested to know how many white collar travellers would embrace such idea…
Perhaps the problem has already been answered and we are too blind to recognise it. Sydney Airport is at capacity, Melbourne and Brisbane airports use less than 1 quarter the available space and capacity. Why does the financial and tourist focus need to remain with Sydney, yes they have the harbour bridge and opera house, but it doesn’t have to be the gateway to the country!
If you are flying into a 2nd Sydney airport and having to commute 1-2 hours to reach Sydny, why not fly into BNE or MEL and connect? If time is the only factor then looking at the time distance per mode of transport opens up many options. A Melbourne or Brisbane solution will not require significant capital investment.
But how about considering the global economic trends and Peak Oil. Many companies are resorting to videoconferencing and other forms of communication that will see airport populations change demographics. Leisure traffic will dominate first. Later as oil prices soar the Air Asia and Jetstar model will reach its end of life-cycle and the remaining flights will cater for the rich who will demand a higher level of service. I somehow doubt that many of these would flock to Canberra as a tourism hot spot. High Speed rail would need to provide freight capacity to move people and supply their needs more effectively. Canberra would be one population centre along the Melbourne- Sydney route.
Getluv, you do not think it relevant to consider what direction Qantas will go before committing billions to an airport expansion which is based upon projections of Qantas growth?
Residing south of the border, I might be a bit out of the loop, but why is Newcastle airport out of the equation if Canberra is in with these SYD alternatives? Google informs me that SYD-NTL is about 80 km shorter by road than SYD-CBR and can serve significant population centres like Gosford/Central Coast region possibly more conveniently than SYD can.
While I’m a fan of having a Melbourne to Brisbane HSR, I don’t think that the Canberra-Sydney-Newcastle section can be relied on as an alternative to a second Sydney airport since I doubt it will actually free up many slots at SYD.
On that, surely one problem with crystals76′s suggestion of international passengers transiting at MEL or BNE is that passengers will likely move from a larger capacity aircraft to a smaller one to get to Sydney, which given the limited number of aircraft movements available to airlines at SYD is a waste of resources and not likely to be popular with the beancounters. Unnecessary usage of smaller aircraft from SYD could be assisted by encouraging more direct international services to other Australian cities, but this would go against Qantas’ Sydney centric approach (apologies, getluv).
Newcastle is not a good drive from Sydney suffering from congestion and a very high accident rate which can literally strand motorists for hours if they are badly located when a major prang occurs. Canberra is a less delay prone drive, however definitely not without its problems either, particularly if you are going to use the M5 East tunnel
The airport at Newcastle is an RAAF facility first and available for commercial traffic second, and at current rates of growth a larger Newcastle airport is going to be needed well within 20 years. The RAAF operations at Canberra do not generate significant movements.
Qantas’ Sydney-centricism is one aspect of the QF management debate that needs to be more closely looked at IMHO. As an example, I used to often fly QF from Tokyo to NZ because 1) I despise Air NZ’s monopoly pricing on the NRT-AKL route and 2) I love Melbourne and look forward to stopovers there. So much so that being on an old plane NRT-MEL c/f a newer one on QF21 from SYD didn’t bother me. But then QF stopped flying NRT-MEL direct and I seemed to always ended up having to transfer at SYD with all the attendant hassles. QF has lost me as a customer, and without the lure of the Melbourne stopover I generally bypass Australia altogether. So everyone loses.
I surely cannot be the only person put off by unnecessary changes at SYD.
Given that there are (about) as many people in Melbourne as Sydney, the population growth in Brisbane/greater SE Queensland, and the impending capacity constraints at SYD, does it not make sense to design a network that shifts more international traffic away from SYD? Or have QF’s competitors beaten them to it already?
Maybe they should advertise taxi / ride sharing. Might be a good solution for people getting to either Sydney or Canberra airport. I tried coseats.com before and it works well for the airport connection.
@Glen McCabe The competition has pretty much picked up the Melbourne “scraps” that Qantas isn’t interested in for whatever reason. For Europe, one can choose from SQ, EK, TG, CR, EY, QR, D7, KE, MH, CX and CA. Qantas only offers Heathrow from Melbourne along with Singapore, Hong Kong and LA. Jetstar gives Melbournians Bangkok, Singapore, Bali and Honolulu. I’m very hesitant to give them credit for Beijing given that it involves a stop in Singapore for a journey that can easily be made non stop (and is done so by CA, in addition to Shanghai as two other Chinese airlines do). Indeed, what on earth is Qantas doing with its Chinese destinations? Surely a rapidly developing country with the biggest population in the world can sustain a few Melbourne – China routes? Or is China too indirect to get to Heathrow?
My family regularly travels from Melbourne to Ireland to visit family and haven’t used Qantas to do so for any leg of the journey in at least 20 years. Given that EY flies Melbourne to Dublin with only one stop (a service my parents were very pleased with when they used it last year) and EK will do the same from January the 9th, I see no way that Qantas will entice members of my family (or indeed anyone from Melbourne’s Irish community) to use their services.
@ TT don’t forget that people in europe will fly to places stupid distances away from where they’re really trying to go if they think it will save them money – heck they’ll even fly to the wrong country – Ryanair used to call Sweden “Copenhagen”!
All depends on how you market it.
Why is it assumed that traffic patterns into Sydney will still be growing? With China and India likely to be the main sources of overseas tourists and family movements, aircraft can fly directly to Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth or close to the tourist attraction rather than via Sydney. The domestic business market is likely to decline further as businesses reduce their travel budgets further. The era of the “Qantas Seamless Transfer” in Sydney looks like ending soon, which will further reduce the demand for seats on SYD_MEL and SYD_BNE routes. For flights across the Tasman, the trend towards less frequent flights between more cities either side of the “ditch” looks like continuing, ending the SYD-AKL route concentration of past years.
Fog?
Did “Her Maj” end up at Canberra because she couldn’t get a landing slot at Sydney? Or did she get BA to fly her direct to avoid the Qantas OneWorld ‘Seamless Transfer’ in SYD.
Although the 17/35 RWY at CBR can accommodate aircraft up to a B777 does the airport have suitable aerobridges for such large aircraft. For her age, the Queen was able to descend the steps from the B777 with dignity, but surely better facilities would be needed for CBR to operate scheduled large aircraft.
nonscenic: The protocol for Her Majesty and other world leaders when they travel on charter or non-commercial flights is that they use the stairs to/from the tarmac, instead of aerobridges. If Her Majesty travels on a commercial flight (which she does occasionally; I learnt it from BBC’s Airport documentaries), she would happily to use an aerobridge, as the last pax to enter before the plane is being pushed back.
In terms of suitable aerobridges in CBR – it depends what you mean by “suitable”. I think the new Qantas terminal in CBR has aerobridges that can connect with B777 or even B747 without problems (hopefully it won’t be long before the new multi-user terminal at Virgin end will be up and running as well). If your point is whether CBR can handle multiples wide-body jets with thounsands of pax all at once is another question…