SCMP Tuesday April 26 2011
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Let me tell you a story about our airport. Planning for it was somewhat delayed because a financial secretary of the early 1980s, John Bremridge, a Cathay Pacific man, said we didn't need a new one. By the time planning started again in the late 1980s there were other important things to talk about, most notably the handover of sovereignty in 1997. The airport became one of the items of discussion in these talks and the negotiators from the mainland came up with a brilliant idea. Let's just have one big delta airport, they said. We'll put it in Shenzhen, which is central for all of the delta, we'll make it as big as you want because we still have lots of room there and we'll give you people in Hong Kong every privileged access you want - your own customs and immigration channel, your own railway, your own highway, you just tell us.
No, said the Hong Kong negotiators.
Come on, talk sense, said their mainland counterparts. It makes no difference anyway. It's all going to be just one country in a few years' time and we'll have the world's biggest airport right where it's best for us all. You just tell us what you want at Shenzhen and you've got it.
No, said the Hong Kong negotiators.
And No it was. Beijing wanted the softly, softly approach to Hong Kong in the run-up to the handover. Its negotiators therefore gave in. Pointless obstinacy in Hong Kong would be accommodated for the sake of a smooth transition.
So now we have five contending airports in the delta, none of them making a proper return on investment if they are not losing buckets of money. We in Hong Kong alone spent HK$35 billion to build Chek Lap Kok, even more to build the transport connections to it.
Our special benefit from this is to have commercial aircraft blaring out their ascent phase over the harbour every few minutes because the planners forgot to tell us until after all was built that this is where the major take-off path would be. Just forgot, you know. Oversight, you see.
But back to this ballyhoo about 1,000 flights a day.