Perth Airport Welcomes Transition Plan to Re-open Borders
Perth Airport CEO Kevin Brown says the airport team will work with the government and its officials to flesh out the finer detail of the plan.
“State and Federal travel restrictions have had a brutal financial impact on our operations, and we have lost around 8.6 million passengers compared to pre-Covid,” Mr Brown said
“But Perth Airport has done the right thing by Western Australia by keeping our runways and terminals operational to ensure the State’s FIFO workers can travel safely, to allow freight into and out of WA, and to allow Western Australians to return home safely from overseas.
“The transition plan gives us more certainty and will send a positive signal to international airlines that border re-openings are not far off.
“There will be some understandable frustration that re-opening is not happening sooner but the positive is that we will not lag too far behind the east coast States.
“This should allow international airlines the confidence to start preparing their operations for the coming Northern Summer scheduling season.
“We will also be holding further talks with the State Government on the need for some serious investment to attract international airline capacity back to the Perth market.”
Mr Brown said there was still some work to be done on the “nuts and bolts” of the transition plan.
“As always, we need to consider the practical implications of the plan for a working airport environment,” Mr Brown said.
“We are hopeful that the removal of border restrictions will be combined with a removal of the G2G requirements, otherwise there would need to be a significant increase in police resourcing to cope with additional passenger numbers.
“The removal of the G2G checks would free up those police resources to be re-directed to other areas of need within the community.
“We welcome the Government’s assurances that they are prepared to consult and work through these issues with us.
“In the interim we would urge all Western Australians to get vaccinated to keep our community safe and allow a smooth, swift and safe re-opening of our borders.”
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