Newsstand - AKL completes upgrades, prepares for A380

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3283657a13,00.html

Auckland Airport has completed the latest stage of an ongoing runway upgrade project and started preparations for next year's arrival of the world's biggest aircraft, the Airbus A380.

It is interesting that a small airport like Aukland can afford to fly the A380 but most US airports cannot. What gives? Is it because Aukland flights are almost entirely long distance international flights, whereas US flights in most airports are local? If so would open sky agreements between the US and other countries help or hinder the A380?

There seems to be a completely different approach between the US and the rest of the world with regard to hub vs point to point. I wonder how much is due to politics, due to differences in operations and geographical demography and how much due to shortage of funds.

AKL could be doing the A380 upgrades in a bid to attract more traffic. Airlines operating A380 equipment to SYD might want to add AKL as one of the "legs" to improve utilization or improve loads and yields on their SYD flights. Also, offering A380 capability might get new service to them (say an airline now flies two 747s to AKL, but both are around 75% capacity - you could move that to one A380 at 100%).

When it comes to the US airlines, the closest you could see for A380 service is UA SFO-NRT and maybe ORD-HKG. Everything else is happy with one 747 or one 777 or one of each. Also, once the A380 gets to NRT or HKG, UA does not begin to have the passenger traffic to justify that A380 moving on to BKK, SIN, or SGN. The 747s and 777s coming over are fine to handle that onward traffic.

Speaking of Auckland and its airports:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3284892a13,00.html

The Government has dismissed any attempt to allow a civilian airport operation to share Whenuapai Air Base with the air force - effectively ending any hope of a second commercial airport for Auckland.

A lot of flights are long distance. AKL airport (and CHC too apparently) is gearing up for A380 because SQ, EK and QF have all said they want to fly the A380 to NZ. EK would be continuation service from Australia. QF the service through to LAX.