Gunnedah Shire Council awards airport upgrade contract to Airport Consulting Group

Gunnedah Shire Council has awarded a contract for the construction of a new tarmac at the airport facility to Airport Consulting Group.

Mayor Jamie Chaffey said the contract was a huge step in the plan to bring commercial flights back to the town.

"Once the works are complete it's the aspiration of council, on behalf of our community, that we will then move forward with commercial airlines to provide regular passenger transport to places like Sydney," he said.

There has been "genuine interest" from commercial airlines to touch down in Gunnedah, Cr Chaffey said.

A delegation from council will meet with airlines in Sydney this week to kick start conversations.

Despite the contract being awarded, the budget for the airport upgrade has blown out by more than $4 million.

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Council was originally granted $3.8 million from the federal government to reconstruct the tarmac, taxiway and the area where aircraft, park, unload and refuel.

But in a closed meeting council voted to increase the total project budget by $4,585,731.

Cr Chaffey said he had written to federal MP Mark Coulton and Minister for Infrastructure Catherine King, to seek further funding for the budget shortfall.

"If we are unsuccessful in seeing further grant funds then we will be using financial assets within the organisation to fund the shortfall," he said.

With a new state-of-the-art hospital on the way, Cr Chaffey said being more connected to metropolitan areas would help attract staff.

The town is facing a shortage of workers in nursing, dental, solicitors, lawyers and manufacturing and processing, the mayor said.

"This is an important step forward to help make Gunnedah more connected and a quicker timeframe to larger centres to enable a lot of other people and specialists who want to come into our community to do so," he said.

Cr Chaffey said the airport upgrade would also help new industries take flight in the shire.

"Having access to commercial flights makes Gunnedah much easier for people to make that decision about whether they might invest in Gunnedah into the future," he said.

Work is expected to start on the tarmac in 2023, with flights to take off once accreditation from the Civil Aviation Safety Authority has been approved.

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