Chek Lap Kok in a flap over possibly dud air traffic control system
Chek Lap Kok is embroiled in controversy over a system that is beginning to look like a dud
Imagine this. You buy a brand-new car in 2011 for HK$156,000 to replace the one you bought in 1998. Jump to today, and that new car hasn’t even been used, although you’ve had to fork out thousands on repairs.
Meanwhile, you’re still driving the old car and have to shell out HK$2,000 every year to keep it running.
Now multiply this scenario 1,000 times – so the price tag becomes HK$1.56 billion and yearly maintenance hits HK$20 million – and swap the ageing car for an air-traffic-control system, and you come close to the current real-life situation at Chek Lap Kok airport.
Over budget and way past deadline, the government’s attempt to upgrade its air-traffic-control system has emerged as a hugely flawed process with fears that it bought a dud system under questionable tender conditions.
Meanwhile, the city’s 450 air-traffic controllers and support staff have been forced to use an outdated radar system that reached its use-by date in 2012.
Couple this with serious concerns of a conflict of interest within the most senior ranks of the Civil Aviation Department over the billion-dollar purchase and controversy over mismanagement of departmental funds by the director general of civil aviation, Norman Lo Shung-man.