The important, but overdue action by the government to preserve airports for aviation, could have seen the Hoxton Park aerodrome turned into a Q400 or ATR-72 turbo-prop hub that would have broken Sydney Airport’s monopoly pricing grip on domestic air services.
Unfortunately, it took the airlines too long to recognise that potential before it was sold for industrial development by the Bankstown Airports venture that also purchased the Hoxton Park and Camden Airports when they were collectively privatised in 2003 by the Howard government.
Had the provisions of the Airports Amendment Bill 2010 been enforced when the three Sydney basin airports were sold off, the need for the owners to find an aviation use for Hoxton Park would have inevitably lead to its conversion from a general aviation strip to a Macquarie Bank buster in terms of undermining the price gouging of airlines and travellers by Sydney Airport.
The 1542 metres north-south oriented strip was perfect for the 72 passenger ATR and Bombarider Q400 turboprops, which are competitive against jets over flight stages like Sydney to Melbourne, Brisbane, the Gold Coast and even as far away as Adelaide, because they waste less time taxying to the end of long runways and fly at close to the jet speeds of 737s or 767s in cruise.
The M7 motorway , which linked the M2, M4 and M5 motorways, follows the western fence line of the Hoxton Park site. For many regular business travellers to the other major SE cities, access to Hoxton Park would have been faster and simpler than it is to Sydney Airport. Especially those in the Hills district and from Strathfield through Parramatta and for the Macarthur and Campbelltown and Penrith reaches of the metropolitan sprawl.
It would also have evaded the restrictions on a second Sydney jet airport being built in the Sydney basin, since it would not have been used by jets, and had already been built.
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