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SCMP Reporter

In the world of talking shops few can be given as many awards for hot air production as the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum .

This is the one, you recall, that pretends countries with a piece of shoreline touching the Pacific Ocean have more in common than just that piece of shoreline.

Well, yes, they are populated too and, what is more, with people who talk, my word, how they talk.

Talker No 1, of course, is United States President Bill Clinton when he shows up.

And he did in Brunei this time on his way to finally doing voluntarily what the draft could never compel him to do - go to Vietnam.

His message was that the world should get together again for another round of global trade talks. Hello there, Bill, have you ever heard of Seattle? That is where the last global trade talks were held, remember? And the only trade they seem to have promoted was the one in tear gas. Got a new idea for making resurrection work?

But there were plenty of Asia's closet protectionists in Brunei too and when Mr Clinton grabbed the media attention it gave them scope to furrow their brows, suck in their breath and pronounce to the cameras that it was perhaps all a bit early.

Resurrection, Bill, not revival.

This one is still the other side of comatose.

Yet the irony of it all was one, little noticed, advance in free trade revealed in Brunei.

It was one of those thin edge of the wedge advances which could eventually lead to breaking down the steel gates of our protectionist airline policies in Hong Kong.

The United States, New Zealand, Singapore, Brunei and Chile reached a multilateral open skies agreement - the world's first.

They will allow each other's airlines to fly freely between themselves as often as they want, at the times they want, picking up whatever passengers and cargo they want from whatever origin to whatever destination.

It is not entirely as big a breakthrough as it first appears. The US already has bilateral open skies agreements with all of them as does New Zealand. This agreement just expands things so that they all have these arrangements with each other.

There is also still that thorny question of when open skies will mean the complete freedom of the other countries' airlines to fly passengers and cargoes between US airports. They cannot at the moment. The US pleads that if it gives these rights to some foreigners it must give them to all.

This of course is mighty convenient for the US. United Airlines, for instance, is hardly attracted to operating a daily cargo service from Changi to Jurong in Singapore. The same might not be said of Singapore Airlines looking at a service between Los Angeles and New York.

Live and let live, however. Where would diplomats get their jollies if not in such squabbles? The important thing is that open skies around the world is the obvious way of reducing the costs and improving the convenience of air travel. In cargo it is fast becoming an absolute requirement of efficient air transport.

And once begun there will be no stopping it. The airline industry may kick and scream but it cannot resist 21st century free markets forever.

Get ready for it.

Chek Lap Kok has the capacity to be a central hub airport for Asia and is superbly located for it.

With the latest generations of aircraft it is now a non-stop destination from almost anywhere in North America, something which Singapore is still just too far to be.

But it will not happen until a certain green-coloured airline is told that tomorrow has arrived and that it should not presume to speak for Hong Kong.

If we do not do it we now have a warning from Brunei that our chance may slip by.

And if we do it we can also talk about auctioning landing slots, a way at last of making our new airport pay for itself decently.



Skies still the limit in Hong Kong