Airport News

The new airport, which opened last week, is using SITA AirportConnect Open to run common-use check-in and boarding, as well as to provide kiosk check-in for Qantas passengers.

Brisbane West Wellcamp can handle all commercial aircraft, carrying both passengers and freight, and will be used for flights across Australia.

Phil Gregory, general manager of Brisbane West Wellcamp, says: “We selected SITA’s technology because SITA has such broad expertise in providing and running airport IT systems.

“We expect passenger volumes to grow rapidly, and with SITA we can easily expand our capacity. And perhaps most importantly for us as a new airport, with SITA’s cloud solution there is minimal up-front investment and our costs are directly related to our passenger volumes.”

SITA AirportConnect Open for regional airports is a cloud-hosted common use terminal equipment (CUTE) system.

The technology enables airports, airlines and their handling agents to access their respective IT applications in real-time on shared, common-use equipment, and allows any airline to use any agent desk or gate position for passenger check-in and bag drop, and reconciles passengers boarded.

For the opening of the airport, SITA installed check-in counters and boarding gates along with self-service kiosk check-in for Qantas passengers, and boarding gates include RFID-capable common-use readers, an important requirement for Qantas.

As Brisbane West Wellcamp’s traffic grows, more workstations and kiosks can be added to service increasing passenger volumes.

The gateway received its inaugural flights from Sydney on November 17, and the 300-hectare site features a 2.87km runway capable of landing a Boeing 747 aircraft, is the anchor tenant of the 800-hectare Wellcamp Business Park, and has a terminal with extensive retail space.

Construction and logistics group Wagner Global Services, put up around A$100 million (€70.9 million) to fund the airport.