The airport said the expansion would create six new remote stands for aircraft parking.
It would also enable construction of the new domestic jet terminal to continue.
The new domestic terminal should be completed in about 2029.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon attended the opening today.
“It is great to be here,” he said before cutting the ribbon with a giant pair of scissors.
“I’m very proud of the asset you’re building for the airport company but also importantly for New Zealand.”
Airport chief executive Carrie Hurihanganui told the Herald the project could be used for overnight parking, when an aircraft arrived in the evening and departed in the morning.
“In peak season, if we had a large event, you might see some aircraft landing here with some bus operations.
“It really provides that flexibility for everything from refuelling, parking, passenger arrivals.”
Hurihanganui said the land was previously mostly shrubs and largely undeveloped.
“In some instances, the team had to dig down six metres, because it was quite undulating, to get it nice and flat,” she added.
“It was always earmarked, as far as the master plan, to be airfield. And there, over to the northwest, is the cargo precinct which is a future development as well.”
The airport previously said the new cargo precinct should take some strain off roads.
Auckland Airport chair Julia Hoare said the expansion was the airport’s biggest project in nearly 60 years.
“In the summer of ‘66, there were about 200,000 people who attended the opening of the orginal airport.”
Jason Dardis, the airport’s airfield programme director, said the new airfield pavement had a top layer with half a metre of concrete.
“In some areas, where we were installing services and the 4.4km stormwater system that now runs under the airfield, we have excavated down to six metres,” Dardis said.
“We poured enough concrete to fill more than 25 Olympic swimming pools and moved more than a million cubic metres of soil to prepare the site.”
He said about 108,000 tonnes of old runway concrete was crushed and reused to help build the foundation layer of the new airfield.
“By reusing what was already here, we avoided thousands of truck trips on local roads and reduced the project’s carbon footprint,” Dardis added.
Project construction started in 2019 and paused during the pandemic before restarting in mid-2022.
At its busiest, the project had about 600 workers on site every day.
John Weekes is a business journalist covering aviation. He has previously covered consumer affairs, crime, politics and courts.
