For those of you who have been following Wānaka Stakeholders Group closely for some time, you’ll have a reasonable idea of the complexity of the issues we’ve been dealing with over the last 18 months in particular. In the lead up to the court case, we’ve obtained access to a lot more information and found out more about what QLDC and QAC have been up to – but until now, we’ve not been able to share much of this.

However, we’re now four days into the judicial review hearing before the High Court, and because a whole lot of previously confidential evidence has been discussed in open court and reported on, along with the detailed submissions being published by media, we’re able to share more detail with our members.

For starters, we’ve put together an interactive timeline of the key facts and events which form the background to this judicial review. You can see many of the steps QLDC, QAC and individuals from both organisations have taken to take strides towards a jet capable airport at Wānaka Airport. You can learn more about reports each organisation has commissioned or had access to (but has not shared with the community), the order of events to date (many kept secret from us), and even the strategic alliance agreement between QAC and minority shareholder Auckland International Airport Limited (the detail of which we’ve only recently seen) – all of which we’ve not been able to talk about. Until now.

Please note that there are two documents subject to a court order, meaning that we cannot share the source documents – one of these is the Strategic Alliance Agreement, and the other includes runway plan options prepared for QAC. But plenty of detail has now been shared and reported on.

The interactive timeline is best viewed on a laptop or bigger screen, but also works on your phone too (it looks different there). You can click on each event for more information and even to click out to source web pages or media reports. They are colour coded and labelled (Wānaka Airport, WSG, QAC, QLDC) for ease.

We may update or improve this over time, but for now, we hope this is useful.

Click the image of the timeline below or choose Resources > Timeline in the menu at the top of this website to start.