(Caption: Hamilton Airport Operations general manager Ben Langley in the Customs area)
This article appeared in the Waikato Business News - 5/5/25
For 13 years, our business travellers have been forced to deal with Auckland traffic (and Auckland parking charges) before even boarding for the short, three-hour flight across the Tasman.
That’s a whole day travelling, much of it unproductive. If there’s one thing all businesspeople agree on, it’s that time is money.
From next month, that all changes. Get dropped off at Hamilton Airport in the morning, board your Jetstar flight around noon and you’ll be in Sydney by early afternoon ready to do business. There will be four flights a week to Sydney to pick from with a further three flying direct from Hamilton to the Gold Coast.
When Waikato Regional Airport and Jetstar announced the flight schedule in September last year, we heard a collective sigh of relief – not just from holiday seekers – but from the Waikato and Bay of Plenty business communities jaded by the Auckland commute.
Organisations like the Waikato Chamber of Commerce were quick to point out that, as well as Auckland-Hamilton-Tauranga, there was another Golden Triangle between Hamilton, Sydney and the Gold Coast. The route offers maximum flexibility (and a great way to blend business and leisure) but without creating downtime.
The need for flexibility is something we know is important to business travellers. On the back of Jetstar, we’ve made further changes at the airport we hope will offer even more benefits to the local economy in the not-too-distant future. Those changes have been made as part of the already-planned refurbishment of our northern terminal in preparation for international airport status.
From the outside, it looks like not a lot to see. But inside has seen a dramatic change. During Covid we future-proofed the existing terminal building by investing in earthquake strengthening, so we’ve not had to start from scratch. We’re now investing around $7 million in more carparking plus the equipment, space and specialised border technology required by the government to make Hamilton Airport an international gateway to the central North Island.
It’s meant working alongside multiple government agencies to tick every single box (and there are a lot of them).
The refurbishment also allowed us to consider what else we could do to offer further flexibility and make Hamilton Airport even more attractive to airlines.
(Caption: Mark Morgan - CE, Hamilton Airport)
As part of that, we made the call to invest in specific facilities which will allow airlines to offer domestic jet services in and out of Hamilton, if they choose to in the future. Given the strength of the Waikato economy, we are very hopeful they will, adding another string to the region’s bow.
Domestic jets have the potential to offer faster connectivity between Hamilton, Christchurch and Wellington, and potentially longer flights like those to Queenstown. Same day travel will become quieter and easier, particularly for business travellers who simply want to get home.
And because larger jets will need to fill more seats, there is likely to be a greater range of fares on offer to business and leisure travellers alike.
I often remind people the decision on what routes airlines choose to fly is up to the airlines themselves. Our job is to create the environment to make a viable proposition. We have managed to attract an international airline back to Hamilton; the hope is that airlines will now look to Hamilton as an increasingly attractive option for domestic jet services as well.
