Airports across Asia-Pacific have had to make changes to operations as they grapple with reduced traffic due to the coronavirus outbreak.
In Japan, Tokyo Narita International airport has closed one of two runways from 12 April, 06:00 local time, until further notice.
“Therefore, in order to ensure operational safety and efficiency at the airport while also striving to prevent further spread of the pandemic, we have decided to close Runway B and move to single-runway operations using Runway A,” the airport operator said in a 10 April statement.
It adds that it expects recovery to take “a considerable amount of time”.
Australia’s Brisbane airport has brought forward the decommissioning of runway 14/32 in order to provide parking space for grounded aircraft. It had planned to decommission the runway in May as part of the preparation process for its new runway.
It said in a statement on 7 April that it now plans to provide free parking for up to 100 planes.
“We have created an additional 10 dedicated parking zones to accommodate the increased demand, including runway 14/32, Taxiway Papa (the original decommissioned runway for BNE), the logistics apron and various other aprons that have been modified to accommodate additional aircraft,” chief executive Gert-Jan de Graaff said.
Perth Airport said in a 10 April post on its official Twitter account that it closed its Terminal 1 domestic pier after Virgin Australia cut its schedule further. Previously, it warned that terminal closures were inevitable.
In a statement on 8 April, Perth Airport said it expects to lose up to A$100 million ($63 million) revenue this financial year. Passenger numbers are expected to be close to zero between April and September this year, compared with 5 million in the year-ago period.
The operator says fly-in, fly-out (FIFO) workers in resource-rich Western Australia usually account for 20-25% of traffic but they now make up almost all of the airport’s passenger numbers.
“We are looking at ways we can partially close our terminals during the day or night and look to consolidate flight services around the FIFO demand,” says chief executive Kevin Brown.
“Ultimately we will have to temporarily close some terminals due to the almost complete fall-off of interstate and international flights.
