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Its arrival may have been delayed and slow, but the first test cargo flight has touched down at Western Sydney International Airport (WSI).
The Qantas A321 cargo plane touched down at 2pm on Monday, more than 90 minutes after its scheduled arrival, and is part of the airport’s operational readiness programme.
For a long time, like the airport itself, the flight was just a flickering speck on the horizon, watched with bated breath by the assembled crowd of airport employees.
Its landing was met with applause and marked a major milestone in the development of the new airport and ultimately a step forward in changing the way Sydney residents fly and receive cargo.
Flight captain David McCutcheon said the arrival of the first cargo flight was a “privilege” and that there was one major difference from landing at Sydney Airport: “No traffic.”
“You don’t slow down or set up there. We didn’t have a holding pattern, so all those things that Western Sydney will bring.”
Domestic cargo flights are due to officially begin operating from the 24-hour cargo area on July 27, with passenger aircraft expected to arrive approximately three months later. International freight transport should begin in 2027.
The flight is heading to land at a new airport. Walter Peters
Qantas said it would support the movement of a “diverse range of goods” from the 24,000 square meter cargo terminal, which is expected to handle more than 850 tonnes of goods each week.
Qantas Freight chief executive Igor Kwiatkovsky said the new logistics center at WSI could reduce delivery times.
“The key to air travel here is speed,” he said. “The best thing about this facility is that it is significantly more automated than the operations we do at some other ports today.
“We think we’ll get a much faster delivery speed.”
The trial run tested many of the new airport’s processes, including aircraft maintenance, ground operations, systems, air-side coordination and cargo handover procedures.
The opening of Western Sydney International Airport will also end private Kingsford Smith Airport’s long-standing monopoly on air travel and logistics in Sydney, providing new opportunities for passengers and businesses.
It comes after WSI announced in April it had signed a third cargo operator with Dubai-owned dnata, which invested $32 million, joining Qantas and Menzies in setting up facilities at a new cargo site near the southern end of the 3.7km runway.
The test flight went off without a hitch. Walter Peters
The huge Qantas cargo ship was parked in one of the bays, called “hard berths”, next to the new hub’s warehouses, where high-value goods – from flowers and seafood to pharmaceuticals – are expected to be loaded on board.
According to WSI’s draft master plan, the new airport will be able to handle 293,000 tonnes of cargo by 2030, rising to 546,700 tonnes over the next two decades. By comparison, Sydney Airport estimates it will be able to handle 1.4 million tonnes of cargo by 2045, compared to the approximately 600,000 tonnes it handles today.
The flight route changes came into effect last week as part of the overall logistics network change that will come with the opening of the new airport.
The changes mainly affect aircraft taking off north of Sydney Airport’s main north-south runway before turning northwest over inner western suburbs such as Summer Hill, Ashfield and Croydon. Another change affects planes heading west from the east-west runway.
This means cargo planes that may land or take off at Sydney Airport in the early hours will be forced to use WSI curfew-free runways. Currently, up to 15 cargo flights per day can arrive or depart from Sydney Airport between 11am and 6pm.
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The first passenger flight from the airport will be a domestic Jetstar flight to the Gold Coast at 11am on 25 October. The low-cost airline will operate up to 14 weekly flights between WSI and Melbourne, four weekly flights to the Gold Coast and three weekly flights to Brisbane, subject to government and regulatory approval.
The first foreign airline to fly out of WSI will be Air New Zealand, which will begin passenger flights between the new airport and Auckland on 26 October. It will be followed by Singapore Airlines, which will begin flights to the new airport on November 23.
Qantas will begin passenger services at the new airport in March next year, operating four weekly flights to Brisbane and Melbourne using the QantasLink Embraer E190 aircraft.
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Mostafa Rahwani is a reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald based in Parramatta. He was previously a communications reporter at Guardian Australia.Connect via email.