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It might have been delayed and slow to come in, but the first trial cargo flight has landed at Western Sydney International Airport (WSI).
The Qantas A321 freighter landed at 2pm on Monday, more than 90 minutes after its scheduled arrival, and forms part of the airport’s operational readiness program.
For the longest time, just like the airport itself, the flight was just a flickering speck on the horizon, watched with bated breath by the assembled crowd of airport staff.
Its landing was met with cheers, and represents a milestone for the new airport and ultimately a step forward in reshaping the way Sydneysiders fly and receive their goods.
The flight’s captain, David McCutcheon, said it was a “privilege” to bring the first cargo flight in, and that there was one major difference with landing at Sydney Airport: “No traffic”.
“You don’t get slowed down and you don’t get sequenced in there. We didn’t experience a holding pattern, so all those things that Western Sydney will bring.”
Domestic cargo flights are due to formally begin operating out of the 24-hour cargo precinct on July 27, with passenger aircraft due to follow around three months later. International freight operations are due to begin from 2027.
Qantas said it would be supporting the movement of a “diverse range of goods” from the 24,000 square-metre freight terminal, which is expected to handle more than 850 tonnes of goods each week.
Qantas Freight executive manager Igor Kwiatkowski said the new logistics hub at WSI could cut hours off delivery times.
“The key thing about air freight here is speed,” he said. “The best thing about this facility is it’s significantly more automated than the operations that we have in some other ports today.
“We think we’ll get a much quicker speed of delivery.”
The trial run tested many of the new airport’s processes, including aircraft handling, ground operations, systems, air-side coordination and cargo transfer procedures.
The opening of Western Sydney International Airport will also end the privately operated Kingsford Smith Airport’s long-held monopoly over air travel and logistics in Sydney, providing a new option for passengers and businesses.
It comes after WSI announced in April that it had signed a third cargo operator in Dubai-owned dnata, which has invested $32 million, joining Qantas and Menzies in setting up facilities in a new freight precinct near the southern end of the 3.7-kilometre runway.
The massive Qantas freighter was parked at one of the bays, referred to as “hard stands”, near the warehouses at the new hub, where high-value goods ranging 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, increasing to 546,700 tonnes within the next two decades. By comparison, Sydney Airport estimates it will be able to handle 1.4 million tonnes of freight by 2045, up from about 600,000 tonnes it handles today.
Flight path changes came into effect last week as part of the overall shift in the logistics network that will come with the new airport’s opening.
The changes mostly focus on the aircraft taking off to the north of Sydney Airport’s main north-south runway before arcing towards the north-west over inner west suburbs such as Summer Hill, Ashfield and Croydon. The other change is to aircraft heading west from the east-west runway.
It means freighter aircraft that can land or take off at Sydney Airport during the early hours will be forced to use WSI’s curfew-free runways. Currently, up to 15 cargo flights a day can fly in or out of Sydney Airport between 11am and 6pm.
The first passenger flight out of the airport will be a Jetstar domestic flight to the Gold Coast, at 11am on October 25. The budget airline will operate up to 14 flights a week 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 launch its passenger flights between the new airport and Auckland on October 26. It will be followed by Singapore Airlines starting flights to the new airport on November 23.
Qantas will begin passenger operations at the new airport next March with four flights per week to both Brisbane and Melbourne on a QantasLink Embraer E190.
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