Australian Airport infrastructure is a joke - just like roads, public transport, water etc etc.
-Witness: no international standard 60M wide Rwys in the country except Darwin.
-No minima below Cat 1 ILS.
-International airports without even a full length parallel taxiway (YBCS).
-International airports with RWYs generally considered too short for regular widebody jet operations compared to international norms (YMML 09/27, YSSY 07/25, YSSY 16L/34R).
-Hardly any gates with dual aerobridges at major airports.
Several times every year the nations air transport is thrown into chaos by fog at SYD or MEL yet Cat III ILStechnology has been around since the 1960's, QANTAS B737-800's have CAT III manual flight HUD capability but they are not allowed to use it.
All the other problems mentioned above generally have either saftey or cost implications for the carriers and the public that use these airports. The costs, across the economy, of the fog disruption are massive even if it only happens a couple times a year.
Why aren't these problems fixed? I guess because the airport operators have no incentive to fix up the initial underinvestment / poor design by the various governments when the airports were built. These operators including our favorite Mac. Airports (their target is to get $32.50 from each person who visits their airport - even if your not flying!) are monopolies who can charge the carriers virtually what they want and get away with poor service and continuing underinvestment - particularly in the "operational" side of their airports.
Why should Mac Airports build a Cat III ILS? All those diverted aeroplanes will come back and provide a landing fee anyway, meanwhile all those stranded pax will spend more money in the terminal, on parking etc. I supsect this is why we have spending on masses of new shops, so much so you think you are in a Westfield Mall rather than an airport - at the same time they can't be bothered to upgrade navaids/taxiways /runways/approach lights - the list goes on. Fog costs the airport operators virtually nothing but everyone else from the customer to the enviroment is stung.
