XN000022-1995-04-19 — Page 18

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Every day of the year, those living under, or in close proximity to the flight paths in and out of the airport suffer disturbance from aircraft noise, so it is small wonder that there are those in the community, and in this Council, who consider that it would be adding insult to injury to increase this level of nuisance in any way.

The good news, of course, is that all such disturbance will disappear for good on the opening of our new airport at Chek Lap Kok. Unfortunately, we cannot simply sit back and wait for our new airport to open. In the interests of the growth of our economy and maintaining Hong Kong's position as one of Asia's leading financial and commercial centres, we must do all we can to ensure Kai Tak keeps up with the increasing demands upon it.

This is why the Administration initiated public consultation, in December last year, on the possibility of:

(a)

providing a total of 26 additional slots within the airport's existing operating hours in the periods between 6:30 to 7:00 a.m. and between 9:00 and 11:30 p.m.; and

(b)

extending the airport's operating hours by one hour to provide 6 additional departure slots.

In the consultation paper the Administration set out clearly the problem which we face: namely that Kai Tak is now operating close to capacity and that, as a result, during the 1994/95 winter scheduling season, we were already having to turn away some 300 flights a week. Incidentally, we expect this figure will increase to over 400 per week later this year. We also explained that, although the Administration - and in particular the Civil Aviation Department - have done their best to increase the throughput of aircraft, and hence passengers, at the airport, during the hours of 7 a.m. - 9 p.m., there is little more that can be done because virtually all the runway time slots for takeoffs and landings during these hours are either now occupied, or cannot be taken

up because of scheduling difficulties at the other end.

The Administration will continue to do all we can to enhance the handling capability of Kai Tak:

by continuing to improve air traffic control systems in order to increase the number of aircraft movements that can be programmed each hour (an increase from 28 to 29 movements per hour was introduced on 30th October 1994 and a further increase to 30 movements per hour is planned);

by continuing to expand and improve the efficiency of the passenger terminal;