TNAG-1175-FCO40-1477-Proposed-replacement-airport-for-Hong-Kong-at-Deep-Bay-or-Ch-1982 — Page 4

there would be no yardstick against which to measure the merits of CLK in overall avtrodevelopment terms unless it were recognised

that Deep Bay could be a suitable option. Furthermore, North Lantau has no natural population growth trends and no commitments at present by the Government and the private sector to development programmes, and would require great capital expenditure on

(i)

(j)

transport infrastructure both for the airport and any such future programmes;

a full consultancy on Deep Bay would not significantly delay the envisaged completion date of a replacement airport. It would itself be relatively moderate in cost ($100 million to $200 million).

The cost of actual construction at Deep

Bay would probably not differ significantly

from that at CLK. The necessary infrastructure

in the NWNT might cost between $1 and $2 billion less than that required on North Lantau.

Assuming full compliance with the constraints outlined in paragraph 4(c) and (d) above, the operational and economic arguments against can be summarised as:

(a) because of the configurations of the runways,

maximum capacity of the airport (plan

(b)

(c)

(d)

annexed) would be limited to 50 aircraft movements an hour compared with 79 for CLK;

the noise impact over populated (and proposed to be populated) areas of the NWNT would be such that:

(i)

(ii)

the maximum capacity of the airport would be further reduced by the need to take mitigating action at all times; the use of the airport would probably have to be severely limited at night. There are no limitations at CLK resulting from noise;

it would involve aircraft flying close to the border at low levels. There would be a risk of aircraft straying across the border with unpredictable results;

Hong Kong would have to extend its control of air space over Chinese territory in terms of air traffic control and would have to enforce building height restrictions on Chinese territory;

SECRET