US MILITARY FLIGHTS DECLINE AT CHRISTCHURCH AIRPORT

- Bob Leonard

This is Peace Researcher’s annual report on American military flights at our airport in Christchurch. Unlike the last flight year (June through May) which included the September 1999 visit of President Bill Clinton to Christchurch, there were no noteworthy events to be reflected in the activities out at our airport, which hosts an American military air base.

But there is a very interesting and possibly significant trend in the flight data that is obvious in the bar graph. The graph shows the frequency of purely military/intelligence flights of Starlifters and Galaxys (so-called Channel Flights) and excludes the seasonal Antarctic flights which support the US Antarctic Program (USAP) during the southern summer. There has been a decline in the number of monthly flights since December 1998 and continuing through May 2001. Months with no flights at all are now common (see conspicuous gaps in the graph), including four months in a row in mid-2000 with nary a Channel flight.

About the graph: The bars show frequency of monthly flights by US Air Force aircraft using Christchurch International Airport in the period 1 June 1997 through 31 May 2001.The aircraft were non-combat cargo carriers: C-141B/C Starlifers, C-5B Galaxys and C-17 Globemasters. A transit flight consists of an arrival and a departure for a given plane. All of the flights are termed “Channel flights” serving US bases in Australia (Pine Gap and Nurrungar). None of the flights directly served the US Antarctic Research Program. Raw monthly data are provided by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade under the Official Information Act 1982.

We have yet to make an official inquiry into the reasons for this decline. But we have speculated in past articles that it may have something to do with the imminent closure of the large US Air Force Defense Support Program (DSP)-base at Nurrungar in South Australia (see PR 19/20, November/December 1999, for details of the DSP).

In the table below the far right column shows the percentages of strictly military (or military/Intelligence) use of Christchurch Airport by American aircraft over the decade of the 90s and through flight year 2000-01.The peak percentage was 72.9 in 1990-91 and has declined to an all-time low of only 10.4% in 2000-01. And it has been well below 50% after 1997-98.

Flight Year	Antarctic	Military	Total	% Military
1990-91	32	86	118	72.9
1991-92	71	97	168	57.7
1992-93	38	85	123	69.1
1993-94	47	63	110	57.3
1994-95	33	58	91	63.7
1995-96	28	79	107	73.8
1996-97	31	78	109	71.6
1997-98	37	66	103	64.1
1998-99	63	37	100	37.0
1999-2000	48	27	75	36.0
2000-01	112	13	125	10.4
Totals	540	689	1229	56.1

The table summarises flight year totals of transit flights by two categories of American military cargo planes at Christchurch Airport.

ABC has long complained about the military/Intelligence Channel flights. They have been a fixture of the American presence in Christchurch for decades. They remain an unwelcome violation of the spirit of our Nuclear-Free Law since all of the cargo aircraft are covered by the “neither confirm nor deny” nuclear policy. But it is good news that their numbers have been vastly reduced, whatever the reason.

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