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EMINI GEMINI GEMINI GEMINEWS NEW
HAPPIER LANDINGS, BUT THE COSTS WORRY THE CHINESE
A Chinese delegation to Hong Kong has just gone home unhappy about plans for a new airport. It believes the project is too grandiose and will use up reserves needed by the government that takes over in 1997. In Hong Kong itself views differ on development plans stretching into the 21st Century which could prove to constitute the biggest civil engineering programme in the world. But, reports Gemini News Service, building a new airport is a must for Hong Kong whose famous runway at Kai Tak just cannot cope any longer.
By DEREK INGRAM
Hong Kong
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1,100 words approx
One of the more dramatic landings in the world is the touchdown at Kai Tak airport, Hong Kong. One minute you are skimming high-rise buildings right up to the edge of the runway. The next you are safely down on a single runway that
points out into the sea.
The safety record is as good as any in the world, but passengers flying in for the first time shut their eyes as the plane seems to kiss the rooftops, and pray. Next time they know what to expect and confidence is restored.
Kai Tak's single runway, however, has outgrown the traffic, which is
rising by about 11 per cent a year and by 1993 will reach capacity at 24
million. By 2000 it could climb to 32 million.
Enlargement is impossible, and in any case population congestion means 250,000 could soon be living under the flight path.
An alternative airport has been planned for more than a decade. Now, seven years from the handover of the colony by Britain to China, the project has become as much of a political hot potato as the long-running battles over citizenship.
No one seriously disputes that a new airport must be built, and the
site, chosen from more than 20 possibles, is not so controversial as the sheer grandiosity of the scheme.
The two-runway airport planned for Chek Lap Kok, on an 'island and land to be reclaimed adjacent to the large island of Lantau, is in the Hong Kong tradition part of just about the biggest civil engineering programme in the world, involving thousands of workers.
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