The Government does collect a departure tax of HKD 120 per local ticket but that does not include transfer and transit passengers whereas AAHK passenger throughput numbers includes the same pax arriving and transiting as 2 Pax in their figures ; it does the same with aircargo, 90% of which are re-exports.
The actual cost of the airport project was HKD 155 billion when including the dedicated railway line, bridges and expressways etc; see below:

http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_d...=20110610&fc=7
" Sung believes too that what officials fear most is an environmental impact assessment unfavorable to the project.
The airport opened in July 1998. Seventy billion dollars of public and private money went for terminals, runways, taxiways, bays and ancillary facilities.
Another HK$34 billion went into the airport railway, and billions more on bridges, tunnels and expressways to make the Lantau site accessible.
The all- in cost was HK$155 billion."

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/hkediti...t_12764351.htm
" The diversification of firms such as Foxconn and the consequent drop in air cargo have taken place therefore mainly at the Hong Kong International Airport, and it probably explains the monthly declines in cargo turnover in April and May this year. If this truly is the case and the decline is structural instead of seasonal, one should expect further declines in air cargo shipments in the coming months and perhaps even years. It may become a long-term declining trend if the metropolitanization process in the PRD region turns it into a service economy instead, thereby forcing most of the manufacturing activities to shift to places further away from the core areas of Guangzhou and Hong Kong. Thus Hong Kong's airport will lose the local industry's demand for air cargo freight from the region forever.
Hong Kong has to find new sources of demand to sustain its current operations and the new runway beyond the next 12 years. Even so, the competition will be very acute because of the large increase in capacity in the regional cluster of airports. Thus late expansion of the airport in Hong Kong is running counter to any conventional wisdom.
The author is head of China Business Centre, Hong Kong Polytechnic University. "

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/hkediti...t_12727350.htm Hong Kong China Daily
More studies demanded on third runway impact By Joseph Li (HK Edition) Updated: 2011-06-18 06:45
“Besides, the report does not take into account carbon emissions by vehicles passing by the airport's vicinity, including Tung Chung and North Lantau, Choi said.
Samuel Hung, chairman of the Hong Kong Dolphin Conservation Society, said the authority has attempted to dismiss the impacts on the Chinese White Dolphins by modifying the document on dolphin movements that he had prepared for the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department. The authority management finally apologized to the green groups. The environment groups responded that the authority should apologize to the public for having misled the people of Hong Kong. "


www.scmp.com
Emissions from aircraft will grow Letters Page
The 2 per cent aviation emissions figure Cathay Pacific Mark Watson cites ("Aviation industry is committed to addressing climate change impact", June 20) in response to my letter ("Emissions accelerating, not declining", June 13) differ from the 3-3.5 per cent cited by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) website.
The ICAO's projected aircraft emissions growth of 3-4 per cent per year contrasts with Mr Watson's planned halving of emissions by 2050. In 38 years, a 3.5 per cent exponential growth will quadruple, not halve, current emissions: 628 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually will become 2,512 million tonnes. Because aircraft engines release CO2, nitrogen oxides (NOx) and particulates into the stratosphere, their impact is amplified. Current contrail-generated cirrus clouds insulate the atmosphere adding an independent warming effect greater than all previous aircraft CO2/NOX emissions since we began flying. Also, the 70 per cent of improvement in aircraft fuel efficiency has already been achieved. To "radically reduce" that remaining 30 per cent of emissions is technically increasingly difficult.
Any future efficiency improvements are offset by the doubling of flights projected by the Airport Authority.................. I quote: "HK's GDP forecast at compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 3.4 per cent" (GDP doubles in 20 years); "Mainland's CAGR at 7 per cent" (an unrealistic quadruple GDP increase over 38 years); "Air traffic demand doubling by 2030", coincidentally, a 3.5 per cent annualised growth in demand. Where is this growth to come from? Cheap extractable oil, without which these growth projections are unfeasible, is almost exhausted. If the authority's growth projections are correct, aircraft emissions will rise exponentially, making climate change a major problem - or Peak Oil will terminate the 20th century infinite-economic-growth/business-as-usual model, making flying prohibitively expensive, thereby killing demand. Thus, a third runway either adds to climate change or is redundant.
Richard Fielding, Pok Fu Lam
http://sph.hku.hk/faculty_and_staff_detail.php?id=20