Jasmine Siu
Friday, August 01, 2014
A third runway will not solve the low efficiency of flights through Hong Kong International Airport due to the mainland's airspace restrictions such as unexplained closures and the entry height level at 15,700 feet, an environmental group said yesterday.
Green Sense president Roy Tam Hoi- pong said the real problem lies in the flight airspace above China.
The Airport Authority had earlier said only 23 percent of all flights are affected by the restrictions.
Green Sense recently conducted a study with the Airport Development Concern Network, concluding three in 10 flights are affected because of restrictions set by the People's Liberation Army that only permit flights to enter Chinese airspace at 15,700 feet. The study, which analyzed one million flights between 2010 and 2012, also found that in 2012, more than 100,000 flights and 1.5 million passengers were affected, as the restriction brought frequent flight delays and extra flying time for routes that were supposed to pass through China.
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British Airways Hong Kong International Cabin Crew Association chairwoman Carol Ng Man-yee said the current air traffic congestion cannot be solved even if Hong Kong built 10 or 100 runways, as the problem lies in the congestion of flight routes when planes are either forced to fly extra distances to enter the SAR, or have to hover around to wait for landing clearance.
"The problem lies in the air - not on the ground," she said.
While Ng acknowledged that air traffic congestion may also be caused by an increase in the number of flights, she questioned if the existing runways are really saturated.
The two runways at Chek Lap Kok currently handle 64 flights per hour at peak hours.
But initial projections in 1992 - before the airport began operations in July 1998 - put the handling capacity at 82 to 86 flights per hour when its calculations excluded the effects of the PLA's restrictions.
