IF ALL the aircraft owners, operators, companies, employers and employees, pilots, students and everyone else who depends on a living from the facility are still hiding behind the belief that there may still be a future – albeit a very short one — for Virginia Airport, or that the old Durban International Airport (DIA) will become the ultimate alternate, then the Page 1 main lead in a recent edition of The Sunday Tribune must really have come as an earth-shattering wake-up call.
“Sutcliffe: I’d like to stay” was the main headline with a teaser: “City manager has big plans for Durban”. This man with an almost perpetual grin who early last year was hinting that Virginia’s ultimate closure would not be “for some years” and “perhaps” DIA could be an alternative, showed his true colours in his interview with the Durban Sunday newspaper.
By the look of things, Michael Sutcliffe has never considered DIA as an alternative airport. He wants a huge dig-out port costing R300billion to be built within the next 15 years. Where does he honestly think he is going to get all that money? From the ratepayers? Why not? He seems to think they have an inexhaustible supply of cash. Sutcliffe is good at digging. He was the man who dug deep into Durban’s coffers and spent billions on blowing up a perfectly good soccer stadium to build a new one for the World Cup – a stadium which, depending on ratepayers’ points of view, ranges from a Durban icon to an eye-sore – a monument to wasted money.
He is pushing hard for his dug-out port saying that a decision has to be made this year. But he has entirely overlooked the fact that, in the past decade, billions have been spent on building Coega, the new port just outside Port Elizabeth, and just recently, a major upgrade of the Durban harbour has been completed. By all accounts, Coega is currently massively under-utilised and the expansion of the Durban harbour means that for the next 25 years at least there will be an oversupply of deep water port capacity on the East Coast.
There is just no need for another East Coast port, but according to his interview in the Sunday Tribune, “… Durban is the only place in Africa that can become a ‘super port’. There is no site as strategically important as this one…” Is this an indication of his illusions of grandeur?
To build yet another port will be to saddle the country and Durban with another white elephant that draws in huge amounts of capital, but fails to produce long term employment opportunities. Does Sutcliffe care? Not by the sound of things. Does Sutcliffe also care that by closing Virginia Airport and building sandcastles with his planned dug-out port, will leave the city totally devoid of any suitable general aviation airport? To even suggest alternates like Cato Ridge, Richards Bay or Margate shows his ignorance of matters aeronautical and his obvious “don’t really care” attitude. What does he care if it costs the city millions in lost revenue; if the lack of a City Airport hampers the tourist trade and puts hundreds of workers out of work? But the “dug-out” is not his only plans for this year. He wants to set up Durban as venue for the either the 2020 or 2024 Olympic Games and to host a number of major conferences again at the cost of many millions (billions?) of rand. And maybe he might also like to start renaming more streets in the city, a move which proved totally unpopular with a large proportion of the city’s citizens – of all colours and creeds. Does he care about their objections or criticism? Rising rates, the loss of the city beaches’ Blue Flag rating and allegations of favouritism for ANC-aligned industrials and businesses, are three more factors which, according to the Sunday Tribune’s article, are among those which have angered many Durbanites about Sutcliffe. Too right!
Returning to the Durban City Airport question, one of its biggest champions is Kim Gorringe, the former CEO and now vice-president of the Commercial Aviation Association of Southern Africa, who launched an initiative along these lines, but which, through the insidious apathy of many aviation persons in Durban and through no lack of trying on his part, has been put on the “back burner until the time is right” by the majority of the aviation community in Durban. Gorringe, on the other hand, has not given up.
Both Toyota and Transnet have turned down the idea of taking over the site, so why won’t Sutcliffe realise that the only proposal worth considering is the continued use of the DIA site as a Durban City Airport? Why destroy a perfectly good existing runway, ATC tower and terminal buildings when these facilities are currently needed by the aviation industry and would cost billions to replicate? A Durban City Airport on the DIA site will provide many economic and other benefits for Durban. It will serve as a relocation site for Virginia Airport; an alternate airport for low cost carriers, and a continued base for SA Air Force and SA Police Service’s Air Wing operations.
With such a larger facility, the Durban general aviation industry, especially the charter and flight training activities, will expand thereby generating more employment and revenue for the City. In a recent letter published in a local daily newspaper and copied to World Airnews, the writer pointed out that creating a City Airport would also save more than a billion rand of public money required to construct new runway and hangar facilities for general aviation and the SAAF at King Shaka. Furthermore, Durbanites would benefit from substantially cheaper air travel on, for example, flights to Johannesburg and Cape Town, due to cheaper airport charges at the Durban City Airport.
“Cheaper air fares will allow for many more South Africans to travel to and from Durban, thereby growing local tourism especially to the south of Durban. This, in turn, will create opportunities for local people to establish hospitality and tourism businesses and thereby create jobs. The truth of the matter is that it will be travel affordability that will dramatically grow tourism in Durban – not flashy new airport buildings like King Shaka International Airport,” the letter concluded.
But despite Sutcliffe and his grandiose idea of a dug-out port or even as a site for a future nuclear power station, apparently the Parliamentary Transport Portfolio committee is now planning to conduct a public hearing early this year on what should be done with the site of the old Durban International Airport. At last, some sense! At last parliamentarians are obviously beginning to give all sectors a chance to voice their opinions. So there are a number of questions to consider: Will DIA become the future Durban City Airport or will it become a dug-out? In the meantime, will Sutcliffe be given the chance to serve yet another term as city manager? Can the city really afford his schemes and dreams?
