Future
Linfox hoped Avalon would capture 10% of the Melbourne domestic passenger market by 2010, increasing to 20% by 2017 which it was claimed would eventually represent up to 3.4 million passengers each year. Further expansion plans involve international passenger and freight flights to the Asia-Pacific rim and Europe.
An upgrade to the current terminal was planned to handle AirAsia X and future international passenger airline flights. This new facility would have provided Avalon with customs, immigration, quarantine and retail facilities and would have been approximately 8,000 m2 (86,000 sq ft) in size.
Accompanying speculation about the opening of an international terminal at Avalon, India's Kingfisher Airlines expressed interest in flying from Avalon to Bangalore non-stop, utilising Airbus A330-200 or Airbus A340-500 aircraft. However severe financial difficulties have all but crippled Kingfisher's operations.
On 17 November 2010 as part of the 2010 Victorian state election campaign, Liberal National Coalition's leader Ted Baillieu committed to build a railway line to the airport if they formed the government. To be built as a branch from the Geelong line and with an estimated total cost of $250 million, his commitment was for $50 million to cover planning, land acquisition and preliminary works for the single track line. The additional $200 million will come from the state government and from the airport, with the Commonwealth government to be asked to contribute a third of the cost . The airport management welcomed the announcement, which will also include an aviation fuel pipeline to the airport from the Shell Geelong refinery.
Read more about this topic: Avalon Airport
Famous quotes containing the word future:
“It has no future but itself—
Its infinite contain
Its past—enlightened to perceive
New periods of pain.”
—Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)
“One merit in Carlyle, let the subject be what it may, is the freedom of prospect he allows, the entire absence of cant and dogma. He removes many cartloads of rubbish, and leaves open a broad highway. His writings are all unfenced on the side of the future and the possible. Though he does but inadvertently direct our eyes to the open heavens, nevertheless he lets us wander broadly underneath, and shows them to us reflected in innumerable pools and lakes.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The future is inevitable and precise, but it may not occur. God lurks in the gaps.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)