Western Sydney Airport officially named after aviation pioneer

Western Sydney Airport’s official name will pay tribute to Australian aviator great, Nancy-Bird Walton.

At a ceremony on March 3, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced the new facility at Badgerys Creek, scheduled to open in 2026, would be officially known as Western Sydney International Nancy-Bird Walton Airport.

Born in 1915 in the NSW Mid North Coast town of Kew, Nancy-Bird became the first woman in the Commonwealth of Australia to obtain her Commercial Pilots Licence in 1933, after taking flying lessons from fellow aviation pioneer, Sir Charles Kingsford Smith. Nancy-Bird was appointed as an officer of the Order of Australia in 1990 and died in 2009. The first Airbus A380 delivered to Qantas in 2008 is also named in her honour.

The new airport is on track to open in 2026 at the equivalent size of the Gold Coast Airport. A second runway is expected to be required in the 2050s and 80 million passengers are expected to pass through the airport annually by 2060.

The NSW and Federal Governments have committed $7.3 Billion in total to construct the airport and deliver a north-south rail metro rail connection by the time of its opening. Construction is expected to create 28,000 new jobs across Western Sydney by 2031.

CCAA met with the Western Sydney Airport Company to advocate the benefits of concrete as a durable, robust and low maintenance option for its runways, taxiways and hard stands. Concrete is used across many of the world’s largest and important airport hubs and its benefits can be found under market information on the CCAA website.