Extract from Financial Secretary's Budget Address on 25th February, 1970.
9
Kai Tak.
The first is the extension of the runway at
Although we have not yet had a formal reply to our request of three years ago to Her Majesty's Government in London for a financial contribution to this project, we have now decided to proceed with its construction as soon as the tender documents are ready, which should, I understand, be some time in April.
There are some points I would like to make about this. First, if I may repeat what has been said frequently before but has been consistently ignored, the project has not been held up by the absence of a reply to our request for a financial contribution. Secondly, our decision to go ahead with construction does not mean that we shall not continue to press our moral case in London for a financial contribution towards the expansion of facilities, the use of which Her Majesty's Government restricts in the interests of British aviation, and against our interest, which is in maximum utilisation.
I should add that our chances of a contribution can hardly have been helped by the various lobbies interested in civil aviation nor by our own publicists who have swallowed the lobbies' line. Although the earlier myth that the new generation of aircraft would not be able to use the present runway has, I trust, been exploded by the imminent arrival of the first Boeing 747 in April, it has continued to be strongly urged that failure to extend the runway would have serious consequences for our own direct economic interests, both in terms of the tourist trade and of our exports, with particular reference to the effect of load penalties.
This is mostly nonsense, and certainly of only marginal importance. I have tried in yain to get details of load penalties suffered or likely to be suffered and of their implications for airline economics but virtually no concrete evidence is available. It is clear that they apply in pather excep- tional circumstances only, for very long stages and on infrequent occasions; particularly when one considers present average seat utilisation of under 50% and the limitations on the volume, as opposed to weight, of freight aircraft can carry. If we were to allocate the cost of the extension over the additional passengers and freight the oxtension actually mado it possible for onch particular flight to carry, rather than spread it over the whole field of operations - and clearly
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