Isn't newcastle poised better to be a relief airport? Even NTL is a stretch. CBR? 1 hour on a train is a damn long time just to transfer to the city.

Canberra has been claiming there will be international flights for years and always cites New Zealand as the likely first route, yet neither Qantas/Jetstar nor Air NZ or Virgin have shown the slightest interest.  Airports are prone, as natural monopolies for most of their users, to over estimate and over invest in infrastructure in a kind of cargo cult mentality.  For example, how many 747s land at Apia since it had its airport expanded to cope?

Canberra has been claiming there will be international flights for years and always cites New Zealand as the likely first route, yet neither Qantas/Jetstar nor Air NZ or Virgin have shown the slightest interest.

How can Qantas/Jetstar and Air NZ do anything about international flights from Canberra when the airport is not able to support international flights? As the article says the airport is only now getting the necessary infrastructure like customs, quarantine, immigration etc and also the runways have only recently been upgraded. I doubt this airport which is privately owned would have sunk all that money into the upgrade if they did not already have some deals done 'behind the scenes' to start international flights or at least a very very solid reason for believing there would be these flights in future.

I also think its smart for them to spend a bit more right now during the upgrade and make their airport future proof. What if there's a situation at Sydney or Melbourne and an A380 or 747 needs to be diverted to Canberra? And any runways that can support those can support the 787 which is going to be the future 'workhorse' for QF and JQ. Better to spend a bit more now than a lot more doing it all again later.

Until a year and a half ago, Canberra's airport was completely pathetic.  Certainly for the nation's capitol.  Sydney Airport needs to reinvest in itself and look at Changi or KLIA in Kuala Lumpur to learn what an international airport should look like

NTL would be a better option IMHO.

Yeah i agree. Go for Newcastle. I think Canberra has its advantages. For example, it is closer to Melbourne and therefore may be a cheaper option for the Melbourne Sydney route. But i think Newcastle being closer to sydney would serve as a good second airport. I think they should have a high speed between canberra and sydney regardless of whether they use it as a second airport.

Me too, Newcastle makes more sense than Canberra as a 'second' Sydney Airport and the high-speed rail should be happening anyway, from Brisbane through to Melbourne which means you'd have Newcastle-Sydney for getting to and from the airport as well as Sydney-Canberra anyway.

Noting that NTL's primary purpose is to function as an RAAF fighter-jet base, where do we propose to put them if expanding NTL civilian traffic?

Canberra's looking pretty good!

QF and VA will lose a bit of money doing if this happens. I think that must be why VA downscaled to an ATR on this route instead of an Embraer - because they may have seen it coming on the horizon.

It is amazing to see just how short-sighted and provincial people in this part of Australia are. The infrastructure is decades behind where it should be. Take for example, Pretoria is connected to JNB airport by Gautrain. Ottawa is an international airport with direct flights to London, Frankfurt, lots of North American cities. The ACT desperately needs an international airport if it wants to generate other forms of economic activity beyond skimming stamp duty off public servants. Where is the ACT going to get its funding from if property prices start to fall? Australia is in a very advantageous time zone vis-a-vis Asia. Canberra could carve out a niche in attracting certain types of business operations supporting the Asian market, but it needs connectivity.

Given that the AUD is significantly overvalued, if and when the commodity supercycle ends and the AUD falls in value, a city like Canberra could be in a good position to attract various types of business activity serving the Asian market. It needs to have the right infrastructure in place or it will lose out to alternative locations as far away as Europe and the US/Canadian West Coast. It sometimes amazes me how places like London can be far more integrated into East Asia than Australia is. Australia needs to wake up and sort itself out, or end up like a South American banana republic, exporting raw materials and agricultural produce in exchange for value-added goods and services.