The airport\u2019s future has been in doubt since Air New Zealand withdrew flights to and from Auckland<\/a> in March 2018.<\/p>\n Since 2019, K\u0101piti Airport has been owned by property developer NZ PropCo, which showed interest in developing it into a residential area, stating the airport was not sustainable.<\/p>\n In 2025 Puketapu Hap\u016b expressed interest in buying back the airport land, an idea the council has publicly supported since 2020. <\/p>\n Sounds Air is the only airline operating from the airport, offering flights to Blenheim and Nelson, after Air Chathams pulled its services in July 2026.<\/p>\n The airport is also identified in civil defence plans as an important regional hub for emergency response and supply. <\/p>\n Costley told the Herald although nothing is confirmed about a closure this month, he has \u201cknown for a long time\u201d and has begun to prepare for the impact on the community.<\/p>\n The zoning battle following the sale is what worries Costley. <\/p>\n The land is zoned as an airport which limits housing developments, but as the condition of the sale is the closure of the airport, a residential zoning proposal may be on the table for council processes.<\/p>\n Costley said he is prepared to fight \u201cthe battle that will be coming\u201d. <\/p>\n \u201cThat is the bit that our community can, and I believe will, oppose.\u201d<\/p>\n A Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) spokesperson told the Herald K\u0101piti Airport Holdings Limited has engaged LINZ \u201cto begin carrying out LINZ\u2019s responsibilities under section 40 of the Public Works Act 1981 in relation to K\u0101piti Airport land\u201d.<\/p>\n If it is determined that land is no longer required for a public work, then it must be offered back to the former owners or their successors.<\/p>\n Any subsequent proposal to change the land from its existing airport zoning to residential would need to go through the applicable statutory planning process involving K\u0101piti Coast District Council.<\/p>\n Costley told Mills he is encouraged by the support from \u201call but one or two councillors\u201d on K\u0101piti Council, although he worries about the sway of the potential of the vacant land once the airport closes. <\/p>\n \u201cThe developers will put pressure on and say \u2018look, there\u2019s money in it for you if you, if you have housing you\u2019ll be getting rates\u2019. <\/p>\n \u201cActually we just need to hold tight as a community. We can win this.\u201d<\/p>\n Costley said there is an offer he\u2019s aware of to buy the land from the owners and continue to run it as an airport to the tune of about $50 million.<\/p>\n \u201cRun it as an airport and everyone will be happy and the current owners have already made plenty of money off it, they could just take that and run.\u201d<\/p>\n There is a local petition on Costley\u2019s social media channels to oppose zoning changes for the land. <\/p>\n \u201cWe are going to stay strong,\u201d said Costley. <\/p>\n Grace Symmans<\/a> is a Wellington-based reporter who covers news in the capital. Grace joined NZME in 2025 as a producer for Wellington Mornings on Newstalk ZB. She can be emailed at grace.symmans@nzme.co.nz<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThey own it, there is nothing anyone, nothing any Government can do, nothing any council can do to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":656488,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[74,2681,5837,9218,651,17163,11586,24004,265039,124,8127,1872,15124,18791,3339,36923,296,702,60832,19720,440,4486,6368,111,43,139,69,1118,11590,3271,1361,223,46001,61,19054,121723,1533,102,1530],"class_list":["post-656487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-after","tag-airport","tag-battle","tag-before","tag-close","tag-closure","tag-coast","tag-coming","tag-costley","tag-could","tag-end","tag-face","tag-fight","tag-fighting","tag-housing","tag-indecision","tag-into","tag-it","tag-kpiti","tag-land","tag-local","tag-month","tag-mp","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-save","tag-should","tag-that","tag-the","tag-tim","tag-to","tag-turned","tag-vowing","tag-will","tag-with","tag-years"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=656487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/656488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}National MP for K\u0101piti Tim Costley. Photo\/ Mark Mitchell<\/p>\n