Performance-based navigation (PBN) procedures implemented by Airways New Zealand are now being followed at the airport.
The aim has been to deliver a safer and more efficient air traffic management system in ''extreme terrain rich'' airspace where no full surveillance was available.
The success of the system at Queenstown means PBN will be introduced across New Zealand in a $5 million programme until the end of 2016, Airways New Zealand spokeswoman Philippa Sellens said.
Airways NZ won an international award for air space efficiency against 70 other countries.
The PBN project took more than two years to complete, from the concept proposed in its first draft, to the effective date of November 15 last year. It has taken the past six-months for pilots and controllers to get used to the new system.
Queenstown Airport can now handle up to 12 aircraft per hour, compared to the previous four or five per hour, in poor weather and in the alpine terrain of the Wakatipu basin.
All airlines operating in Queenstown benefited from dramatically reduced in-flight delays, from 2000 to 2600 minutes a month to about 400 minutes a month, based on December 2012 data, and 227 minutes a month, based on February 2013 data.
Airways NZ can safely manage more than double the traffic with no requirement to tactically separate arrivals from departures, Ms Sellens said.
Queenstown Tower chief controller Clayton Lightfoot said Queenstown Airport was the first airport in the world to use the innovative technology.
Whereas the old Queenstown structure was based on navigational aids on the ground and a straight-line system, now, with GPS technology, ''we've got these RNP, or required navigational performance, approaches where they do curved tracks, so now they fly down the valleys and do corners and turns to get you lined up with the runways''.
''When you do a cloud break, you're a lot closer to the runway. Therefore, you can get in more often and you don't have to do any visual circling manoeuvres in the basin, which is obviously a high-risk manoeuvre.''
Asked if diversions to Invercargill because of bad weather and coach transfers to Queenstown would be the nuisance of the past, Mr Lightfoot said those instances would be ''reduced significantly''.
Smaller propeller-driven ATR aircraft, commonly flown by Air New Zealand, still did not have the equipment to conduct the full RNP-AR, or required navigational performance authorisation required, as Airbus or Boeing 737 had and would still divert, he said.
''ATR cloud break altitude is around 3000ft above the ground, whereas the jet cloud break height is 390ft above the ground, so straight away, there's a big gap between the parameters in which they can come in.
''The cloud base in Queenstown is generally never below 1000ft, unless it's fog, so these jets will pretty much always get in. The only reasons for jets not to come in are turbulence, or wind shear.''
Queenstown Airport Corporation chief executive Scott Paterson said RNP and PBN were very complementary technologies. The new system freed up the airspace around the resort and, as a result improved capacity, Mr Paterson said.
''Without this work, Queenstown could have had traffic constraints as far as frequency of flights.
''It allows us to plan with confidence for growth.''
Reach for the sky
More than 1 million people flew into Queenstown in the past year and passenger numbers increased by 30% in the past three years.
International passenger numbers were up 30.4% and domestic passengers up 9.6% in March, compared with March 2012.110,477 passengers moved through Queenstown Airport in March, a 12.7% increase on the same month last year.
Growth attributed to 24 more domestic and 30 more international flights in March, compared with March 2012.
All four airlines experienced strong and steady passenger loadings in March, achieving 85%, which was above average.
Sources: Airways New Zealand and Queenstown Airport Corporation
