A tourism taskforce has called for a relaxation of the aircraft movement cap at Sydney Airport in order to meet visitor targets.
The report by the Visitor Economy Taskforce said the federal government should raise the peak hour cap at the airport from 80 to 90 aircraft movements while increasing the number of flights allowed between 5am and 6am from 24 to 35.
The taskforce said those changes would bring in nearly $1 billion a year in increased expenditures and would allow NSW to meet its 2020 tourism goals. But the federal government has repeatedly rejected calls to raise the cap, most recently from a government commissioned study that called for raising the peak hour cap from 80 to 85 flights to help relieve airport congestion. The cap, as well as an overnight flight curfew, is in place in response to concerns over aircraft noise.
The taskforce report also called for a variety of other measure to boost tourism to NSW, saying the state was increasingly losing market share to other states such as Victoria. Those measures include state government incentives to boost construction of new hotels, the development of a brand strategy for the state, and targeted advertising to key tourism markets such as China, the US, Britain and South Korea.
The report did not address the option of building a second Sydney airport.
