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COVER STORY‘Green giant’s’ hush-hush arrivalThe A380’s arrival in Sydneyfrom Singapore last month onits first commercial service wasa major plus for the aviationindustry’s ‘green’ lobby. TOMBALLANTYNE reports.Environmental issues such asnoise and emissions have beena controversial part of life forthe Sydney InternationalAirport for decades. It wasfor this reason that the arrival of the A380in Sydney could not come soon enough forJulieanne Alroe, general manager assetplanning and services for Sydney AirportCorporation Ltd (SACL).“Clearly, the environmental aspects ofaircraft is just profound for us ... it is muchquieter [than other planes] and that is agenuine bonus for us,” she said.The airport is only 20 minutes awayfrom Sydney’s city centre. It has a cap of 80movements an hour.“For an airport that has a cap on itsrunway movements, an aircraft that bringsin more passengers than other aircraft, albeitin its first generation not as many as weexpected, with significantly reduced noiseand emissions, is good news. It means fewer,quieter flights are needed to move the sameamount of passengers,” said Alroe.But passenger numbers will not be as highas originally expected. When the airportbegan preparing for the A380, Airbus hadinitially designed the aircraft for 550passengers in a three-class configuration.As it happens, carriers like SIA, QantasAirways and Emirates Airline have all optedfor less than 500.“That’s not to say in the future differentairlines won’t have different configurationsthat will allow the capacity benefit of thataircraft to be fully realized,” said Alroe.With A380 flights now underway, Sydneydoesn’t expect any dramas. With a singledaily SIA service, it will be months beforeA380 frequency builds up.“We are expecting Qantas to go intoservice in the second half of next year,although they still have to advise us of thedate. Qantas will be followed by Emirates,”said Alroe.The airport has prepared for what itconsiders the demand will be until the endof the decade.Planning for the big jet began in 2002 andconstruction on upgrades to cope with its sizeand weight started in 2004. Sydney Airport,which handles 31 million passengers a year,has invested around US$90 million, withanother $27 million to be spent in the nexttwo years, to complete terminal upgrades.Runways and taxiways have beenimproved and three new three-dooraerobridges – one to the upper deck and twoto the lower deck – have been built to providefaster passenger boarding on the A380. Bynext year Sydney will have six contact andthree layover gates upgraded for the newplane, although they can all be utilised byother aircraft.In the terminal departure level, check-inbaggage handling systems are more thancapable of handling the expected load in theshort-term and with a gradual ramp up of theaircraft’s services.“We have plans to increase baggageA380 quotessystems and other facilities that will pick upthe slack by the time we get a critical massof the aircraft operating. The departure levelis not an issue,” said Alroe. “On arrivals, wehave plans to build some additional baggagecarousels. The only difference to the ones wehave now is making them longer to handlethe additional luggage from more passengers.Again, that was an existing programme thatwas tweaked to cater for the higher level.”Ironically, the two-year delay in the jet’sdelivery eased some of the pressure. It allowedsome work to be delayed slightly. Everythinghas gone smoothly, according to Alroe.It has been a complex engineering taskto undertake the extensive construction. Toensure normal operations could continuewithout interruption all construction workhad to be performed during the airport’scurfew hours (11pm to 5am).The major airfield works includedwidening of pavement shoulders to runwaysand several taxiways. A major taxiway had tobe relocated to cater for the A380’s additionalwingspan.‘People say it must be very complex. No, it is not. Whenyou aggregate more people together, you don’t have to bea rocket scientist to understand that fuel consumption pernautical mile will be lower’Philippe JarrySenior Vice-Present Product Policy and Former Vice-PresidentMarketing and Development30 ORIENT AVIATION NOVEMBER 2007