NZONE scoping Kingston drop zone 6n3c70

Queenstown skydiving operator NZONE could move south to Kingston.

Its parent company, Australian adventure tourism operator Experience Co, has been talking to the township’s community for nearly a year about shifting from its Jack’s Point airstrip to one on Kingston Station.

Its current site, where it has operated since 1990, sits on land owned by Australia-based RCL Group.

The Hanley’s Farm developer is seeking consent for a 2800-home Homestead Bay subdivision, under fast-track legislation, that would eventually rub out the airstrip.

Experience Co boss John O’Sullivan says it has a lease and resource consent to operate at Jack’s Point until mid-2031, and intends to stay until then "at a minimum".

He reckons with massive developments like Homestead Bay, "planning’s one thing and delivery is another".

Kingston’s just one of "a number" of potential sites it’s looking at in the Whakatipu Basin, O’Sullivan says.

He’s not divulging the others "out of respect for those communities we’re talking to, and because of competitive pressures".

The Wollongong-based company bought NZONE in 2015, before purchasing Skydive Wānaka the following year.

It also operated from a drop zone near Glenorchy — for which it still has a lease and resource consent — until a Covid-induced shutdown in 2020.

He says it’s engaging closely with Kingston’s residents because it’s "critical to have a social licence" wherever it operates.

Tandem skydiving has a low impact on communities, with aircraft take-offs and landings, and parachute drops, able to be done on a "small footprint", he says.

"We’re good for the communities in which we operate.

"We have a positive economic impact, we create jobs, and we bring visitors to the region that otherwise might not have been there.

"That s other tourism operators in those communities."

Kingston Community Association chairwoman Kimberley Marshall says Experience Co’s skydiving operations boss, Ken Stone, made a presentation at its annual meeting last July.

NZONE’s since carried out twosimulated parachute flights, while an actual parachute drop’s inthe works.

A residents’ survey after the second flight prompted 40 responses and generated a series of questions — most have focused on the aircraft’s engine noise and flight path, as well as the volume of customers’ shouts and screams as they parachuted down.

Stone’s answers have been informative, she says.

"Everything we’ve requested, they’ve been happy to do and provided us with information.

"Not everyone’s going to be happy about it, but I think the general sense is people are OK with it."