Just another question to throw in the mix then...

Why are Australia's coastal patrol aircraft based at one of the furthest points on the continent from any other inhabited country? (The P3s at YPED)

I guess it's cause they can be mobilised to any other required military base when a threat becomes apparent.

Also, with the hornets, we have the squadron at Tindal already. Wouldn't putting ALL our fighters there be putting all our eggs in one basket?

What about for when those pesky kiwis attack?;)

PS: I humbly agree, what about Curtin and Shergar (sp)?:rolleyes:

dont forget about the kiwis,:}

YouTube - Gruen Transfer New Zealand Invasion Ad #2

Let the RAAF move to Evens Head, spend some money on a new runway and a bigger Mess.. The locals would like to have an injection of new blood

It's quite easy for politicians to bleet about using williamtown to solve their own inept planning over many years.

It's not a solution to Sydneys woes. It's too far from Sydney to be really useful, however if expanded civil ops are required, then someone needs to pony up the money to build a second runway and the associated infrastructure. Additional civil ops in the current configuration are not going to work efficiently.

My question is who is going to pay. The federal govt is effectively out of the business.

Moving the raaf would be outrageously expensive and the same question applies, who's paying.

I think we'll be putting up with Kingsford Smith for some time yet.

If Willy is to become 'Sydneys' second airport, and part of the deal is to build a dedicated fast train service....they'd better start building the railway now!

Anyone familiar with the F3 is well aware of the terrain north of Sydney. I'd reckon it would take twice as long to build the railway as the airport.

Any experts on the construction of railways care to comment? :confused:

hey they could approve the 457 visa and outsource the work from china, cheaper labour and poeple power !
:}

Sure, why not shift every part of the ADF to the North, out of sight of sensitive gentle civilian eyes? Bugger recruitment, bugger retention, bugger ADF members' living standards ......

If living in the North were so attractive, the population of the North would be an order of magnitude larger than it is. The fact is that most people live in the South East because they choose to do so. Why do so many people think that members of the ADF are so different?

It takes a few days to drop in to Scherger or Curtin and set up .... it takes YEARS to recover from a massive loss of valuable professional warriors.

Pera,

Agreed. So how about a parallel twy on the civvy side and high-speed exits on both sides? That would eliminate any civvy backtracking or crossing plus allow higher flow on the existing strip. A second strip would be expensive and probably wouldn't be needed for quite a while if some other work was done.

In any case, would it not be possible to 'group' the civil ops (eg. civvy arrivals to take place only in first 15 mins of every hour) so that the knucks aren't having to constantly thread through the civvy traffic?

Actually what might be interesting to ponder is, when (if?!) the F35s arrive, what the basing ideas are then - that is, will forces be split between a strike group (at Amberley) and a fighter group (at Willy), with one or two sqns at Tindal? If it's all to be one, big, happy family, then maybe a move to AMB would be on the cards - thus freeing up Willy anyway. AMB is where the tankers will be so maybe that's a pointer...

As for arguments that Willy is too far from the action - well, yes, so it'll be that much harder for a nasty coming in from the north, to successfully knock it out. They will have to get past the screen put up from Tindal (and possibly also Darwin, Curtin and Schergar, if things have been deteriorating long enough that forces have been deployed) and hope they don't run out of juice before getting to Willy. Having your main assets at the back, but facilities to operate forward, is not such a bad idea.

Converting Riccy to civil ops (or even just upping the level of civvy ops) might be easier to justify theoretically, but it's got more people around it than Willy (read: noise complaints, rather than catchment) and Macq Bank would probably invoke their poison pill on it.

Capt Arrr,

YPED is roughly half-way between the two oceans and a similar distance to the north coast. The next-best in that respect would be Alice.

Naivety
 

The naivety of some of the comments in this forum never cease to amaze me.

A parallel taxiway and high speed exits........wow that will resolve all of the problems, and how do those aircraft actually get onto the ground in the first place. Has anyone actually looked at the airspace that the aircraft actually need to manouevre in to get into the airfield in the first place and its capacity to hold the extra traffic that will equate with a second international airport.

Oh yes, why does Willy not just squeeze all the aircraft into the first fifteen minutes, obviously written by someone who is going to limit fighter squadrons to operate within certain constraints. And oh yeah thats right all of the airlines are always completely on time....they are never delayed out of other airports....my mistake, I forgot that we had a perfect system in place in this country. Oh and of course there are never any weather issues or instrument approaches required either.

The best one yet and I whole heartedly agree with the response posted in respect to this, why not move the military up north why do they need to be here anyway. Well let me see, the Defence of this country relies on the young men and women of this country. Do we ask the rest of the population to go and live in remote areas of the country without child care, spousal support and lifestyle because of the jobs that they do, are the people who train to defend this country any less entitled to a quality of life, or are they more so? Plus where is the majority of population of this country.......

Best yet has anyone got any idea about the money that is invested in Williamtown......sure I as a taxpayer am so happy to throw that all away spend billions of dollars relocating them and move our whole entire fighter force to a remote area of the country where we would end up losing all of our valuable people anyway....

Interspacial Has A Point
 

Agree with everything you said Interspacial, however you are farting at the moon if you think people with a financial interest would even consider your points. Take Fleet Base East for instance - been there since the convicts,
but now the Finger Wharf has been redeveloped, it's "strategically" inept to have it there. Dont worry about the largest graving dock in the southern hemisphre there, or the infrastructure, just move it because Disco Dario and his partner Skye or is itAmber??? Cant see the harbour. Same with Willy. Jaye the developer would love to get his hands on the land around Willy -the boys and girls in uniform can go north, after all Jaye knows strategic stuff, he's read it all here on this discussion!

200 km from Sydney to Sydney's new airport - Mr. Iemma cannot be serious! The rather remote Avalon is only 55km from Melbourne centre, Narita only 65km from Tokyo, and even Ryanair's much derided description of Hahn as Frankfurt only stretches the truth by 110km and has an autobahn from the front gate to city centre!!

Anyway,just why can't the existing site cope? With more runways than LHR (which has the parallels but no longer a crosswind r/way) surely the capacity is there? If it's a matter of terminals, then reclamation into Botany Bay would be a darn sight cheaper than building new elsewhere.

The sheer distance to Williamtown,the wrong side of Newcastle, makes the idea a joke - it takes an hour just to drive from central Sydney to Hornsby at peak times and then another hour and a half to the north of Newcastle (that's without allowing for the effect of extra traffic departing Sydney en route to the airport).

The assumption that there's going to be some sort of bullet train up north or magic road improvement seems unlikely when the existing Sydney railway system and the Pacific Highway can't be financed or fixed by successive governments. Looking at recent "remote" airport newbuilds like Narita,Shanghai and Kuala Lumpur, a surface link has to be max 40 minutes. Or is the idea that after 23 hours from Europe, another 3 hours to the city centre won't hurt? Unfortunately the population spread in NSW isn't like Europe or parts of the United States (like DFW) where remote airports can be sited between large population centres and catchment areas. With respect to Wollongong & Newcastle, NSW international & interstate air traffic is almost all about Sydney.As far as NSW regional flying is concerned, passengers use it because it's quicker than driving, so shifting those flights to an airport 200km from Sydney is somewhat counter productive. Last but not least, it's hardly very "green" forcing passengers to drive or rail for extra hours even before they board their nasty carbon emitting planes.

By all means develop services from regional airports for their local catchment areas & so take pressure off the existing capital city airports, but the 4m Sydney market needs a better solution.

Interspacial,

Welcome to PPRuNe.

My question re grouping of civilian operations was just that - a question. Thank you for your response to it.

But with respect to the detail - what I was proposing was something whereby the RAAF controllers would not constantly be having to thread fast-jets through civvy traffic; task planners would know that a certain period is mainly for civvies, and work around it. Yes you'll get delays but such one-offs might be easier to slot in than one now, two ten mins later, etc. Whether that is concentrating civvy ops or whatever, I don't know. Anyone is free to come up with a better idea.

Re parallel twy and high-speeds - I have never said that it would "solve all the problems" but I suggest that it depends on what problem you're trying to solve. If you identify the problem as being able to provide a higher flow-rate on the existing single strip and so possibly address some of the Air Commodore's concerns about airfield capacity, in a reasonably short time-frame and without having to wonder where the $$$ will come from for a new strip then I would argue that these things would go a long way to doing that.

If your problem is to effectively replace Kingsford-Smith (or even go half-way there), then you'll need to pretty much create a whole new airport, with a second runway capable of at least code D aircraft, and given the form of major infrastructure projects in Australia in recent decades I suggest both of us will be long dead before that happens.

So, the choice becomes one of the standard Aussie band-aid (quick-to-implement works) or not-in-our-lifetimes (new runway).

And you are correct, I have not thought about airspace management. I did not raise it in my earlier post. But thanks for bringing it up.

The very fact that we're even discussing the idea of using existing RAAF facilities for some civilian operations indicates that there's not much faith in getting brand-new civilian facilities up in anything like a reasonable time and so getting into bed with Ronnie in order to use his concrete, is possibly the only real way forward. If Ronnie is prepared to sleep around, then compromises will be required on both sides. If Ronnie is not, then the issue is closed anyway, no matter how :mad: sarcastic any of us choose to be.

Any one care to argue why a 4th runway couldnt be built across the bay another 07 facing 25.
I'm sure another terminal could be build in the gap between 34L and 34R our country has plenty of landfill also would be a cheaper upgrade than willy.
If Asian country's can build new airports out in open water why cant ours do a small simple upgrade.

Because the Greens would go ballistic!!!!!

Ules,

I'll assume you're currently manning the wind-up handle but just on the off-chance you're not...

you're saying that filling in part of Botany Bay, and then putting a runway on that reclaimed land, would be cheaper than putting a strip on land which is already there? And Qantel is correct - by the time it got through environmental impact, airports would've been replaced by beaming people to London.


That's why we have national parks and they don't, and why the suburbs we live in have trees, and theirs don't.

nah its not a windup .. i think it would be a hell of a lot cheaper..

if williamtown goes through.. (would be awsome) but they really need to upgrade the f3 wack in a high speed railway system.. and also the f3 up to newcastle.the terrain isnt really quite straight....alot of digging goin on there.. a hell of a lot more resources needed..than to just fill in a small part of a bay at botany.

true they dont have national parks and stuff.. but sydney is a growing city in demand. sacrifices must be made ! plenty of national parks in nsw and australia.. it it such a big deal to lose a small block of water where im sure there is no underwater marine life anyway just 3 eyed fish !

would save taxpayers millions of dollars.. ....... fill in the little useless hole. wack a terminal and a parallel runway. done. no need to build a new highway or high speed railway 200kms long. !


http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c8...s/proposed.jpg

NAPs would kill that idea. They already try to limit traffic using 07/25. As far as noise is concerned, the pollies seem to have made it clear that yssy is at its limit.

What ever happened to the Badgery's creek proposal?

I know that they protested heavily about noise, but seriously your going to get the same protests, or even heavier ones from residents that live around Kingsfordsmith if you were to expand it, as well as green groups arguing about the effects it'll have on Botany.

Personally i think the Badgery's creek residents can't be selfish airports are vital to all Global cities such as Sydney.

Also following the retirement of the 707's by the RAAF what about Richmond?

Best you ask the Hon. John Winston Howard and his mate Max Moore-Wilton. :hmm:

John's got a bit of time on his hands these days, so he should be able to answer your letter.