Airport Names: Are they misleading?

[Aulyin]

Are there airports with names that are nowhere near the place your going to visit and you need an hours journey in a taxi to get there?

What's it like when you travel abroad? Worse / better / just the same?

Who decides on naming these airports anyway? The locals / the owners/ the government?

[Toonster]

Hi Aulyin,

Welcome to the forums

I can only comment on the three airports I have used here in NZ; Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch...

Obviously, none of them are city centre, as that would be stupid!

Auckland airport is quite a way out from Auckland City Centre, but there are buses to get you in - when we were there, we had a camper van hired, and there were shuttle buses to get you the few minutes between the airport and the hire centre. I wouldn't have wanted to get a taxi into Auckland itself, though!

Wellington airport is actually reasonably close to the CBD (central business district) of Wellington - our taxi ride from the airport round to our campsite the other side of Lower Hutt was only about 25 minutes (though admittedly, we didn't go right through the city centre!) But there are also regular shuttle buses not only into the CBD, but then out into the Hutt valleys which are really inexpensive.

Christchurch airport, again, we only drove to, but it was only about 20 minutes outside of the city centre. I can't comment on the public transport there, though.

The airports in New Zealand are certainly nothing like the "Easy Jet/Ryan Air" distance from where you are trying to get to, and I would say that the ones that I have used are way closer to the central areas of the cities that they link to than Heathrow or Gatwick.

The "What's it like when you travel abroad?" question is a little bit vague - what sort of travel are you referring to? Air, train, taxi, bus, car? And on the better/worse, are you comparing NZ to UK or to other European travel?

And I can't comment on who names the airports (they are all named, as far as I can see, for the cities that they are actually within!) - are you more referring to the UK / European ones here?

[Aulyin]

Hi Toonster,

Thanks for the welcome. You really seem to know your way around.

I'm quite surprised at just how close the airports are to the city centres that you mentioned.

I was talking about when you reach your flight destination is it as close to the city as you believed it would be? Is transport laid on? Is it reasonably priced?

I was asking travellers to compere the whole of Europe to New Zealand.

Sorry for being so vague, it's just that I've seen the 'New look' Prestwick airport in Scotland and haven't been impressed with the 2005/6 rebranding. I don't know if it's common practice in New Zealand or not to pick the closest town and add the name eg Glasgow Prestwick. I didn't know if the colour schemes and logos had to meet with locals approval or not. Just things like that.

Prestwick Airport is in, what is known locally as Burns Country; Ayrshire and Dumfriesshire, whose tourist industry depends on the Burns name a lot. When Glasgow isn't even in the same shire as Prestwick and Burns was born only a few miles away from the airport it seems to me that locals have a point when asking that the name be changed to The Burns International Airport.

Are ther places like that in New Zealand?

Cheers, Aulyin

[Toonster]

I'm certainly not the best travelled person on the forums, but I have been to a few of the NZ airports...

To answer your questions:

1) Is the destination as close to the airport as you imagined it would be?
Yes, but then I did do some research before travelling. For Auckland and Christchurch, we were picking up and dropping off a campervan, so didn't have far to go to get to the rental site (and shuttlebuses were laid on by the rental company). For Wellington, we were going to a campsite that we knew - we knew that it was a way out of the city (it's not actually in Wellington, but just outside an area called Lower Hutt)

2) Is transport laid on? Is it reasonably priced?
Yes, as far as I am aware, there are buses and taxis from all three of the airports that I've visited - we did debate getting the shuttle bus from Wellington, but as it didn't go to the campsite, meaning we would have to change in the centre of Lower Hutt, with our heavy luggage (the nice people at the airport allowed me to have slightly overweight baggage ), whilst jet-lagged (the flight, via Hong Kong, with a change in Auckland, was about 27 hours long), we decided to go by taxi! The taxi that we took was $55 (appx £20) for two of us - looking at the Wellington airport website, it's about $30 to get you to the centre of the city. For comparison, the regular Flyer Bus is $8 per person to get to the city. For other airports, its worth checking their websites.

For the rest of transport, it does depend on where you are and where you are wanting to go. For us, in Lower Hutt, we have excellent transport facilities - a revamped train service that runs every twenty minutes/half an hour (depending on time) and is about a 20 minute journey into Wellington Central. It is reasonably cheap, and there are mulit-travel discount cards, too. The bus network is good, though quite a few buses only run weekdays and in commuter time (i.e. trying to get places after 6pm gets a bit harder!) But, again, they are reasonably priced, and, aside from one journey when a couple of buses didn't show, they run on time However, I know that trying to get between cities is a bit harder - the trains between Wellington and Auckland, for example, only run a couple of times a day, and cost the same as to fly (very green! )

I've only been here since November, so I don't know what say the people around the airports had with the naming and decorating, but, as far as I can see, the airports are all named for the city that they are by (I'm sure there may be some exceptions to the rule, but I'm not that familiar with the smaller airfields)

From what I have seen (and bear in mind that I've not been here two months yet!), the famous person tends to have buildings / streets named after them, or statues put up, rather than airports.

[Aulyin]

Thanks for all this information Toonster. It looks as though, in the main, that passengers are taken care of quite well and details have been thought out by the owners and staff.
I don't fly a lot and am totally lost when I arrive at a 'new' destination. I would more or less need to be taken by the hand eg clear signage to taxi, bus and train; clear timetables; you are here map, etc. things which a nine year old could follow.

I usually travel with someone who is experienced in the travel sector so that I don't get lost, acting as if I fly all the time. If I lose 'my guide' I'm lost, so the easier it's made for me the better. I might just stick to the 5 day coach trip. I take it that I'm not alone in this. New Zealand sounds as though it caters for the Complete Useless Flyer.

Cheers, Aulyin