Originally Posted by
AerialPerspective
The whole thing was a government cock up, they knew for YEARS that the 747 was coming and the runways were completed years before the terminals. The terminals and infrastructure plans could have been EASILY changed but weren't so the airport was out of date within a year. Compare that with Changi and even DFW where I have seen both marketing/development material and both added 20-30% to the size of (then) current aircraft to allow for expansion. I may be wrong but I think this is one of very few LNP infrastructure projects in our history (Tulla) and it's funny that it was a white elephant. Not just the hydrants but half the aerobridges were useless once the terminal was handling mainly 747/DC-10 type aircraft. It took them nearly 25 years just to move some aerobridges in a pathetic attempt to update it.
Yeah the Aerobridges (gates as I mentioned) where another debacle! With a single Jumbo at one gate the adjacent gate was partly taken up by the new massive bird, seems odd now large planes are nothing new:-) Additional to all of the above the fuel storage capacity (1.6 Mill Ltr at the time total) & the 6 inch incoming line (from the Somerton 16Mill Ltr main jet storage) was also woefully inadequate only a few years after Tulla was commissioned open. The whole idea of an underground pipeline was to keep the fuel trucks off the Tulla Fwy but the supply was soon getting low daily so the trucks rolled in whist the pipeline was running most of the time. The design of the depot did have the facilities for trucks so as to keep the fuel coming during maint down time. Oddly enough whomever designed the whole fueling supply/system must have been behind the 8 ball cause the Somerton storage facility had only one large tank & when that was being filled by pipeline from the Refineries then the 6 inch Tulla supply line could not be used, go figure? In the end when I left mid 90's the storage supply was adequate for a single day had there been any supply issues & that's for a so called modern international Airport! This was all in the 70's 80's & 90's, it's changed now.
There's plenty more stories but am off track here:-)